Typical design for an emerging field-effect transistor made with nanomaterials. The movement of current from the source electrode (gold, left top) across an ultrathin channel (blue) to the drain electrode (gold, top right) is controlled by the source voltage and the electric field produced by the gate electrode (gold, top center) that is separated from the channel by an insulating layer (light gray). At left: Atomic-thickness channel materials can be one-dimensional, such as carbon nanotubes, or two-dimensional layers.
Credit: Z. Cheng/NIST
To continue making smartphones, laptops, and other devices more powerful and energy efficient, industry is intensely focused on identifying promising next-generation designs and materials for the principal building blocks of modern electronics: the tiny electrical on-off switches known as field-effect transistors (FETs). When deciding how to direct billions of funding dollars for next-generation transistors, investors will base many of their decisions on published research results.
But a dismaying amount of research on FETs currently suffers from inconsistent reporting and benchmarking of results, increasing risks of misleading conclusions and inaccurate claims that set false expectations for the field. This problem and possible solutions are outlined in an article published today by an international group of leading experts on semiconductor devices
“Industry is trying to determine the right materials and designs to use,” said Curt Richter, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a co-author of the new article. “They want to know exactly what to make and how to make it. But the industry is getting terribly frustrated, they tell us, because they see a promising piece of information in one publication and another promising piece in another publication, but they’re incompatible. They have no way to compare them. Given the enormous cost of adopting ..
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