AUG 20

New obstacles with the limits of electron flow through semiconductors are one of the many problems engineers face as they continue to push for increased speed and power for electronic devices. But a team of researchers is looking back at the technology of the vacuum tube to develop a means to increase circuit and computational speed.

Once it was invented in the late 1940s, the transistor began to replace the vacuum tube, and led to an amazing range of uses for solid-state devices and the variety of electronic gadgets we have today. Transistors offered savings in both size and energy. But one of the things that vacuum tubes provided was an obstacle free path for unhindered electron flow through the vacuum. "Electrons traveling inside a semiconductor device frequently experience collisions or scattering in the solid-state medium." The problem with vacuum tubes, besides their large size, is that they require high voltages to operate.

Researchers at University of Pittsburgh have developed a method for electrons to travel through a nanoscale vacuum which could lead to advances in electronics with improvements in speed and transistor density. According to the project leader, Hong Koo Kim, "The emission of this electron system into vacuum channels could enable a new class of low-power, high-speed transistors, and it’s also compatible with current silicon electronics, complementing those electronics by adding new functions that are faster and more energy efficient due to the low voltage."

image: CC-BY-SA-2.0-DE by Stefan Riepl (Quark48)

via: GigaOM

Comments (4)

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Vacuum Technology
written by Frank Giacona, August 24, 2012

Interseting that the technology applied to vacuum tubes comes full around to todays nanoscale of circuits, what vacuum range would apply to achive the disired result

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Sounds dangerous
written by miscon, August 31, 2012

How are we to be sure that the nano scale vacuums cannot escape from the device? I imagine if the device was dropped and it cracked then the nano vacuum would be released and could do much damage to nearby objects.

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shouldn't be dangerous
written by Groundbreaker, September 03, 2012

Modern vacuum tubes wouldn't be big clumsy glass things like the old ones. The technology could probably be replicated on a much much smaller scale, and use durable materials.
I'd imagine they'd look like LEDs but maybe be even smaller than that - not something that's going to shatter if you drop it!

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Dangerous? Why?
written by Anon, January 02, 2013

I'm confused on why you think it would be dangerous at all. All a vacuum is, is less pressure than earths atmosphere. They are probably in your house right now, a normal incandescent light bulb is a vacuum that's why they pop when you break them because the pressure is equalized faster than sound travels creating a mini-sonic boom. I think you may be confusing anti-matter, which is created in a vacuum, to the vacuum itself. But vacuum technology should be completely safe as far as I know.

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