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posted by n1 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @08:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the everything-is-something dept.

Faster and smaller transistors are being developed and tested, and here's one of the more interesting new designs. It is effectively a vacuum tube/transistor hybrid. By utilizing modern manufacturing processes it is possible to make extremely small vacuum tubes that do not have any of the problems of older tubes, and also happen to be able to operate in the terahertz range.

Although we are still at an early stage with our research, we believe the recent improvements we've made to the vacuum-channel transistor could one day have a huge influence on the electronics industry, particularly for applications where speed is paramount. Our very first effort to fashion a prototype produced a device that could operate at 460 gigahertz -- roughly 10 times as fast as the best silicon transistor can manage. This makes the vacuum-channel transistor very promising for operating in what is sometimes known as the terahertz gap, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum above microwaves and below infrared.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by cyrano on Tuesday June 24 2014, @10:07PM

    by cyrano (1034) on Tuesday June 24 2014, @10:07PM (#59595) Homepage

    Philips developed an IC with miniaturized tubes in the late eighties. Don't remember what they had in mind as use for the device. Philips has had a lot of research like that that went nowhere...

    --
    The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 25 2014, @01:37AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 25 2014, @01:37AM (#59648) Journal

    But where they so small that it left air molecules out due to scale?

    Oh and "pointless" research educates researchers and tells everybody what not to do.

    • (Score: 1) by cyrano on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:30PM

      by cyrano (1034) on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:30PM (#59947) Homepage

      They were fractions of millimeters tall, but stil vacuum. The research wasn't pointless, but it never took on in the market. Only a few thousand IC's were made. I don't even remember the name.

      --
      The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:44PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:44PM (#59957) Journal

        So these new things exploit inherent forces in the nature rather than vacuum pumped containers like in the 80's?