By Peter Weiss
By restructuring a key part of a transistor, engineers in Illinois say that they have captured the world record for the speed at which such devices operate. More important, the new approach opens the door to much greater speeds, perhaps more than 10 times the rate of transistors in today’s home computers, say the new transistor’s developers.
The technological payoffs of future transistors that operate at a trillion cycles per second, or terahertz (THz), could include improved surveillance systems for detecting concealed weapons, more jam-resistant battlefield communications, and medical-scanning devices that provide more information valuable for diagnoses.