Physicists at the University of New South Wales have observed a new kind of interaction that can arise between electrons in a single-atom silicon transistor.
The findings, to be published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, offer a more complete understanding of the mechanisms for electron transport in nanostructures at the atomic level.
"We have been able to study some of the most complicated transport mechanisms that can arise up to the single atom level," says lead author Dr Giuseppe C. Tettamanzi, from the School of Physics at UNSW.
The results contained in this study open the door for new quantum electronic schemes inwhich it is the orbital nature of the electrons – and not their spin or their charge – that plays a major role, he says.
To read more, click here.