A group of physicists at the Australian University of New South Wales in Sydney and the American University of Purdue in Indiana created a transistor operating as a single phosphorus atom positioned precisely on a silicon crystal.

To create this nanotransistors, they used a scanning tunneling microscope to manipulate individual atoms. Using a lithographic process, phosphorus atoms have been positioned on the crystal and then cover with a non-reactive layer of hydrogen. Hydrogen atoms have been removed in a selective manner in regions defined with precision with the microscope super-fine metallic tip then a controlled chemical reaction has incorporated the phosphorus atoms into the silicon surface.

In the past, other attempts were made to create nanotransistors but with a far inferior handling of the atoms which allowed to obtain positive results only through various attempts.

Professor Michelle Simmons, who directs the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales, said that we’re entering a new paradigm in which quantum mechanics promises a change in technology similar to what occurred with the realization of the first common transistor.

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The point is that beyond its atomic dimensions, this nanotransistors could enable the creation of quantum computers. Conventional transistors have two states, on and off, interpreted as 1 and 0, quantum computers are built to use qubits.

The creation of an atomic nanotransistors is only a step toward building quantum computers so there are still doubts on the real possibilities of turning this now theoretical concept into a reality. This experiment was carried out at low temperatures and this is one of the problems which makes it difficult to apply it to an industrial production of nanotransistors.

It’s inevitable that it takes time to move from an experiment to a working technology that can be applied to actually produce working devices. In short, don’t expect to buy computers that are microscopic yet more powerful than today’s PCs any time soon. Still, it’s a great result obtained years earlier than many foresaw that could go well beyond Moore’s law according to which the performance of microprocessors and their number of transistors doubles every 18 months.