Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-ses!hpcuhb!hpihoah!jwatts
From: jwatts@hpihoah.HP.COM (Jon Watts)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Ballistic transport?
Message-ID: <4420010@hpihoah.HP.COM>
Date: 24 Feb 89 22:51:50 GMT
References: <27301@sgi.SGI.COM>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 15

From bron@bronze.SGI.COM Wed Feb 22 14:39:35 1989
>Anyone out there know anything about the current state of research
>into ballistic transport transistors?  I read several "popular science"
>style articles on the subject a few years back, but haven't heard
>anything from any respectable source.  No doubt all the people that
>are actually doing the work can't talk about it, but can someone
>give me a general idea of where things stand and/or pointers to references?
The Feb. '89 issue of IEEE Micro has an intresting article about a quantum
effect transistor that has been fabricated by Mark Reed and others (?) at Texas
Instruments.  Their device uses ballistic electron transport.  The speeds
and dimensions of the device are incredible.  The base of the transistor is
100 angstroms (10E-8M or 0.01 microns) with and active region of 250 angstroms.
The speed of the actual device connot be accurately measured due to the
macroscopic contacts but they claim projected speed (through calculation) of
100 to 200 femtoseconds (0.0001 to 0.0002 nanoseconds).