Description

On June 30, 1948, AT&T Bell Labs unveiled the transitor to the world, creating a spark of explosive economic growth that would lead into the Information Age. William Shockley led a team of researchers, including Walter Brattain and John Bardeen, who invented the device. Like the existing triode vacuum tube device, the transistor could amplify signals and switch currents on and off, but the transistor was smaller, cheaper, and more efficient. Moreover, it could be integrated with millions of other transistors onto a single chip, creating the integrated circuit at the heart of modern computers.

Today, most transistors are being manufactured with a minimum feature size of 60-90nm--roughly 200-300 atoms. As the push continues to make devices even smaller, researchers must account for quantum mechanical effects in the device behavior. With fewer and fewer atoms, the positions of impurities and other irregularities begin to matter, and device reliability becomes an issue. So rather than shrink existing devices, many researchers are working on entirely new devices, based on carbon nanotubes, spintronics, molecular conduction, and other nanotechnologies.

Learn more about transistors from the many resources on this site, listed below. Use our simulation tools to simulate performance characteristics for your own devices.

Resources (21-40 of 334)

1. Chemically Enhanced Carbon-Based Nanomaterials and Devices

   Online Presentations | 09 Nov 2010 | Contributor(s):: Mark Hersam

   Carbon-based nanomaterials have attracted significant attention due to their potential to enable and/or improve applications such as transistors, transparent conductors, solar cells, batteries, and biosensors. This talk will delineate chemical strategies for enhancing the electronic and optical...

2. CMOS+X: Integrated Ferroelectric Devices for Energy Efficient Electronics

   Online Presentations | 09 Dec 2022 | Contributor(s):: Sayeef Salahuddin

   In this talk, I shall briefly present how integrated ferroelectric devices offer a new pathway in this context. First, I shall discuss the phenomenon of negative capacitance in ferroelectric materials. A fundamentally new state in the ferroelectrics, negative capacitance promises to reduce...

3. Colloquium on Graphene Physics and Devices

   Courses | 22 Sep 2009 | Contributor(s):: Joerg Appenzeller, Supriyo Datta, Mark Lundstrom

   This short course introduces students to graphene as a fascinating research topic as well as to develop their skill in problem solving using the tools and techniques of electronics from the bottom up.

4. Control of Spin Precession in a Datta-Das Transistor Structure

   Online Presentations | 11 Apr 2011 | Contributor(s):: Hyun Cheol Koo

   Transistors Switch onto Spin Using the spin of an electron in addition to, or instead of, the charge properties is believed to have many benefits in terms of speed, power-cost, and integration density over conventional electronic circuits. At the heart of the field of spintronics has been a...

5. Design in the Nanometer Regime: Process Variation

   4.5 out of 5 stars 

   Online Presentations | 28 Nov 2006 | Contributor(s):: Kaushik Roy

   Scaling of technology over the last few decades has produced an exponential growth in computing power of integrated circuits and an unprecedented number of transistors integrated into a single. However, scaling is facing several problems — severe short channel effects, exponential increase in...

6. Design of CMOS Circuits in the Nanometer Regime: Leakage Tolerance

   5.0 out of 5 stars 

   Online Presentations | 28 Nov 2006 | Contributor(s):: Kaushik Roy

   The scaling of technology has produced exponential growth in transistor development and computing power in the last few decades, but scaling still presents several challenges. These two lectures will cover device aware CMOS design to address power, reliability, and process variations in scaled...

7. Designing Nanocomposite Materials for Solid-State Energy Conversion

   0.0 out of 5 stars 

   Online Presentations | 10 Nov 2005 | Contributor(s):: Timothy D. Sands

   New materials will be necessary to break through today's performance envelopes for solid-state energy conversion devices ranging from LED-based solid-state white lamps to thermoelectric devices for solid-state refrigeration and electric power generation. The combination of recent materials...

8. Designing Nanocomposite Thermoelectric Materials

   0.0 out of 5 stars 

   Online Presentations | 08 Nov 2005 | Contributor(s):: Timothy D. Sands

   This tutorial reviews recent strategies for designing high-ZT nanostructured materials, including superlattices, embedded quantum dots, and nanowire composites. The tutorial highlights the challenges inherent to coupled electronic and thermal transport properties.

9. Device Characterization with the Keithley 4200-SCS

   0.0 out of 5 stars 

   Courses | 12 Jan 2011 | Contributor(s):: Lee Stauffer

   This training session is based on the Keithley 4200-SCS Semiconductor Characterization System. It is intended for beginning to intermediate users. It covers basic concepts, both of the instrument, as well as general measurement considerations.

10. Discussion Session 2 (Lectures 3 and 4)

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 08 Sep 2010 | Contributor(s):: Supriyo Datta

11. Dissipative Quantum Transport in Semiconductor Nanostructures

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Papers | 23 Dec 2011 | Contributor(s):: Peter Greck

    In this work, we investigate dissipative quantum transport properties of an open system. After presenting the background of ballistic quantum transport calculations, a simple scattering mechanism, called Büttiker Probes, is introduced. Then, we assess the properties of the Büttiker Probe model...

12. DNA Nanowires

    4.5 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 06 Aug 2006 | Contributor(s):: Margarita Shalaev

    DNA is a relatively inexpensive and ubiquitous material that can be used as a scaffold for constructing nanowires. Our research focuses on the manufacturing of DNA-templated, magnetic nanowires. This is accomplished by synthesizing positively-charged metal nanoparticles that self-assemble along...

13. DRC202 Device Research Conference Technical Presentations

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Series | 22 Sep 2020 | Contributor(s):: Siddharth Rajan (editor), Zhihong Chen (editor), Becky (R. L.) Peterson

    For over seven decades, the Device Research Conference (DRC) has brought together leading scientists, researchers and students to share their latest discoveries in device science, technology and modeling. Notably, many of the first public disclosures of key device technologies were made at the...

14. Drift-Diffusion Modeling and Numerical Implementation Details

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Teaching Materials | 28 May 2010 | Contributor(s):: Dragica Vasileska

    This tutorial describes the constitutive equations for the drift-diffusion model and implementation details such as discretization and numerical solution of the algebraic equations that result from the finite difference discretization of the Poisson and the continuity...

15. Dripping, Jetting, Drops and Wetting: the Magic of Microfluidics

    5.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 13 Jun 2007 | Contributor(s):: David A. Weitz

    This talk will discuss some of the new opportunities That arises by precisely controlling fluid flow and mixing using microfluidicdevices. I describe studies to elucidate mechanisms of drop formation and use these to create new fluid structures that are difficult to achieve with my other method....

16. ECE 606 Lecture 10: Additional Information

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 16 Feb 2009 | Contributor(s):: Muhammad A. Alam

    Outline:Potential, field, and chargeE-k diagram vs. band-diagramBasic concepts of donors and acceptorsConclusion

17. ECE 606 Lecture 10: Shockley, Reed, Hall and other Recombinations

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 30 Sep 2012 | Contributor(s):: Gerhard Klimeck

18. ECE 606 Lecture 11: Equilibrium Statistics

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 16 Feb 2009 | Contributor(s):: Muhammad A. Alam

    Outline:Law of mass-action & intrinsic concentration Statistics of donors and acceptor levelsConclusion

19. ECE 606 Lecture 11: Interface States Recombination/Carrier Transport

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 10 Oct 2012 | Contributor(s):: Gerhard Klimeck

20. ECE 606 Lecture 12: Equilibrium Concentrations

    0.0 out of 5 stars 

    Online Presentations | 16 Feb 2009 | Contributor(s):: Muhammad A. Alam

    Outline:Carrier concentrationTemperature dependence of carrier concentrationMultiple doping, co-doping, and heavy-dopingConclusion