In 1965, Gordon Moore famously predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double about every two years. While the increase still roughly follows that prediction, this trend will eventually slow because shrinking transistors any further will introduce quantum-mechanical effects, such as tunneling, which can degrade performance. Now, Ye-Fei Li and Zhi-Pan Liu of Fudan University, China, have identified two semiconductor materials that should be robust to tunneling when formed into a transistor structure that has lateral dimensions as small as one nanometer [1].
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