New nanowire transistors may help keep Moore's Law alive

Two French researchers, Guilhem Larrieu and Xiang‑Lei Han, may have succeeded in possibly setting back the date to which Moore's Law would no longer apply by creating a new kind of nanowire Field-Effect Transistor (FET). In their paper published in the journal Nanoscale, the two describe how they built a "gate-all-around" made of 225 nanowires, each with its own 14nm-thick chromium layer that serves as a gate.

In their search to find new ways to cram more electronics onto the same size chips, researchers have turned to FETs. Transistors on chips are the parts that control the flow of electricity—figuring out a way to make them smaller is a vital part of keeping Moore's Law alive. One way to do this is to do away with wires and instead use nanowires. However, because of their small size, nanowires aren't capable of carrying enough current to do the work necessary on a chip. To get around that, researchers have tried creating bundles of nanowires; but thus far, the gates to control them have been too unwieldy. In this new effort, the researchers tried a different approach.