Transistor for High-Performance Devices at Low Voltage

A team of scientists at Penn State, University Park, PA, say that a new type of transistor could make fast, low-power computing devices possible for energy-constrained applications such as implantable medical electronics, smart sensor networks, and ultra-mobile computing. Called a near broken-gap tunnel field effect transistor (TFET), the new device uses the quantum mechanical tunneling of electrons through an ultrathin energy barrier to provide high current at low voltage.