New Molecular Transistor Can Control Single Electrons 46
Eloking writes: An international team of scientists has been able to create a microscopic transistor made up of one single molecule and a number of atoms. Gizmag reports: "Researchers from Germany, Japan and the United States have managed to create a tiny, reliable transistor assembled from a single molecule and a dozen additional atoms. The transistor reportedly operates so precisely that it can control the flow of single electrons, paving the way for the next generation of nanomaterials and miniaturized electronics." The team that conducted the research included teams from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan.
Smaller than 1 electron? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Smaller than 1 electron? (Score:1)
Photonics?
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Weyl Fermions [phys.org] are the next 'big thing' in electronics.
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Interesting.
And yet - "It is the most basic building block of all electrons," ...
Shouldn't the fact that the electron is no longer a fundamental particle and the standard model is apparently wrong be bigger news?
Re:Smaller than 1 electron? (Score:4, Interesting)
_Energy_ and entropy propose some profound limitations. There have been some very interesting ideas published for quantum computing, which is not necessarily binary, and could another step upwards. The ability to actually trigger a measurable change for recording equipment to read an answer is, itself, a limitation.
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You insensitive clod!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
That sudden hard-right turn into political lala land almost gave me whiplash.
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There's that confusion again: (Score:4, Informative)
"Once that number drops to single digits these transistors will become inoperable as quantum mechanics starts getting in the way, with electrons spontaneously jumping from one end of the switch to the other whether the switch is open or closed."
Nah, the electron doesn't jump anywhere, your detection of where it is jumps. The confusion between the detection-of-something and the actual-something, again.
The old 'flock of starlings problem', if you can only detect the flock and not the individual starling, then the flock appears to jump from place to place randomly instantaneously, and sometimes appears in two places at once. But that not the bird that's doing that, its the flock-detector.
Re:There's that confusion again: (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, the electron doesn't jump anywhere, your detection of where it is jumps.
Um, when you make a perfect position measurement, the wavefunction somehow collapses to a single position eigenvector, so it *is* where you measure it, that's kind of a fundamental property of quantum mechanics that you can't just ignore. The fact that electrons absolutely do not behave like flocks of starlings is also something you can't just ignore. Stop with the naive reinterpretations. If you have a novel interpretation, it has to generate the right maths. Flocks of starlings don't do that. Sorry that QM is hard, but that's not a human failing, it's just how nature works. The human failing is denying this.
If you're finding QM hard, try learning Newtonian mechanics properly first. No statistic of a Newtonian system jumps from value to value without passing through intervening values, and that includes whatever you consider to be the "position" of a flock of birds.
Captcha: cringe
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" so it *is* where you measure it, "
It is WHAT you measure. If you can only measure *IT* then you detect the IT where you measure it. You see why that is?
So your flock is where you detect the flock to be because that's what you can detect as the flock.
"If you're finding QM hard, try learning Newtonian mechanics properly first. "
Really you QM lot have to go back to the basic 2 slits experiment and ask yourself how ONE single indivisible thing goes through both slits at the same time. Then take a look at the
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Read this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Even when sent through the slits one at a time the electrons interfere with themselves and the full interferance pattern will emerge over time. The pattern vanishes when using a detector to determine which of the two slits the particle goes through. This is one of the factors that confirms wave-particle duality in the framework of Quantum Mechanics. It's also currently a 1st year physics lab for University students at many institutions.
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No, Quark is busy running a bar on DS9, fleecing customers out of gold pressed latinum like a stereotypical Jew.
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Your experiment tells you it does go through both, your physics model says its indivisible.
The particle model said it was indivisible. The wave model did not. Your flock of starlings is essentially the wave model.
Showing that neither the particle model nor the wave model could, by itself, replicate the double slit experiment, is literally the whole point of the double slit experiment. You're pointing out the particle incompatibility alone.
In your final paragraph, you confuse photon and proton. I assume you meant proton throughout?
(You know, "flock of starlings" "quantum mechanics" brings up s
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... flock of starlings ...
Is called a "murmuration".
Re:The future is going to be incredible... (Score:4, Funny)
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Heh. My future had mile-high skyscrapers, colonies on the moon, atomic powered airplanes, fusion power too cheap to meter, and FLYING CARS, goddamit, FLYING FUCKING CARS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This kind of ineptitude is the reason we don't have flying cars yet.
no, not a breakthrough (Score:2)
manufacturability is what drives the industry, not exotic physics. this project was an interesting demo of tricks you can play with an STM, but it offers nothing towards actual transistors or circuits.
uggh (Score:2)