With the development of carbon nanotubes and graphene, scientists were given an entirely new collection of materials to work with: sheets and tubes that could be consistently made with thicknesses roughly those of individual atoms. These materials hold the promise of building electronic devices with dimensions smaller than is currently possible through any other process and with properties that can be tuned by using different starting materials.
So far, most of the attention has gone to re-creating new versions of familiar devices. But a new paper by a group of researchers in Shanghai looks into what can be done if you're not constrained by the sorts of devices we currently make in silicon. The result is a device that can perform basic logic in half the transistors silicon needs, can be switched between different logical operations using light, and can store the output of the operation in the device itself.
Small footprint transistor architecture for photoswitching logic and in situ memory (DOI: 10.1038/s41565-019-0462-6) (DX)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @05:35AM
My only thought to add regarding explaining transistors would be that in very general terms a transistor could be thought of similar to a rudder, if there is some powerful input available it can be guided (which direction the power goes) using a relatively weaker input. The transistor can be used like that where when properly set up a small input at one terminal can control the rate that power can flow at the other terminals. The usefulness is using a weaker electric signal to regulate, to increase or decrease another signal or power source. In very general terms the transistor is often compared to a relay - an electrically controlled switch. The mechanism though, in a transistor is one where there is something like a draw bridge where application of a signal let's the bridge down. I hope that helps.