Short Circuits

Short Circuits
by Charles Piddock

How small can transistors get?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, consider the amazing shrinking transistor! Watch it contract a
million times until it becomes a tiny dot visible only under a powerful microscope!

We all know that technological progress is not an actual magic show. Still, it almost seems like magic the
way the transistor, the main component in all modern electronics, has diminished in size since being
invented in 1947.

The first transistor, made of gold, plastic, and germanium (a metallic crystal), was about the size of an
adult's fingernail. Today's transistors, etched on silicon wafers, can't be seen with the naked eye. The
minimum size of a transistor is now 45 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter-roughly the
width of three or four atoms.

Computer engineers are trying to make transistors even smaller. How tiny can they go?

Chip Switches
Every transistor has the same basic properties: It can both conduct and stop the flow of electricity. The
word transistor is a combination of two words: transfer and resistor.

All transistors are made from materials called semiconductors. A semiconductor is a cross between a
good conductor (such as copper) and a good insulator (such as rubber). It can be made to accept or
reject the flow of electrons in a circuit. Germanium, used in the first transistors, is a semiconductor. So is
silicon, widely used today.

A transistor's ability to control the flow of electricity has made possible our entire computerized world. All
computers depend on the binary system to convert electric signals into useful information. The binary
system has only two numbers: 1 and 0. When a transistor allows electricity to flow through, it registers a
1. When the transistor stops the flow of electrons, it registers a 0. Millions or billions of those 1s and 0s,
flashing off and on hundreds of millions of times a second in programmed patterns, enable your
computer to do everything it does-from allowing you to play World of Warcraft to letting you type up a
school science report.

Paul W.K. Rothemund and Nick Papadakis

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 Short Circuits

DNA strands twisted into smiley faces (above) and a map of North and South America (below)

Inner Limits
A transistor that is only a few atoms wide is incredibly small. But researchers want to make transistors
even smaller and cheaper to produce. Chip-making technology has run into a big problem, however.
Transistors smaller than 45 nanometers and etched on silicon chips don't work very well. They tend to
leak electrons, making them less efficient.

To get around that problem, scientists are using nanotechnology to look at new materials and new
methods to produce transistors. Nanotechnology is the engineering of materials on the atomic level,
building new materials from the bottom up by manipulating atoms and molecules.

Paul W.K. Rothemund

One promising area of nanotechnology is the use of graphene, a carbon fabric that is only one carbon
atom thick. Graphene is strong, stable, and can act as a semiconductor. If researchers can find a
practical way to etch transistors onto graphene, smaller and immensely faster computer chips can be
more cheaply made.

"[The ultimate goal] of electronic engineers is the so-called ballistic transistor," physicist Andre Geim, a
graphene researcher at the University of Manchester, told LiveScience. "It would be very, very fast,
ultimately fast, in fact."

Another promising area of nanotechnology research involves using strands of deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) to build transistors. DNA is the genetic material that determines the makeup of all living cells.
Researchers can now take strands of DNA from bacteria and manipulate them into almost any shape
they want. California Institute of Technology researcher Paul Rothemund has helped pioneer that
technique. He has twisted DNA strands into smiley faces and maps of North and South America.
Rothemund coined the phrase DNA origami, after the Japanese art of paper folding.

Rothemund and others are looking to shape DNA strands into a kind of scaffolding that could be
attached to silicon wafers to make transistors. Because DNA does not conduct electricity, scientists are
experimenting with ways to combine DNA with atoms of conducting materials, such as gold, to build
transistors. DNA replicates (copies) itself. So if researchers can produce a DNA transistor, all they have
to do is add the right "soup" of chemicals, and the DNA would reproduce itself, making millions of new
nano-sized transistors at little or no cost.

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 Short Circuits

Science Photo Library/Photolibrary

This is a microprocessor, the brain of a computer. It holds data and instructions, performs calculations, and organizes operations. In most
computers, the microprocessor is a chip made of a semiconducting material. Etched onto that chip are millions of transistors, which control
the flow of electricity through the microprocessor. Today's microprocessors can each contain up to 1 billion transistors. Intel Corporation is
now working on a microprocessor that has more than 2 billion transistors.

Smart Dust
Making transistors much smaller and much more cheaply could transform our lives. Tiny, smart
nanomachines could do any number of things quickly and invisibly. Their greatest use might be in
medicine. Swallowed in a pill or injected, tiny, computerized "nanobots" might be able to repair damaged
cells one at a time, restoring health invisibly and painlessly before destroying themselves.

The nanobots might repair pipes, bridges, airplane engines, and electrical equipment too. They might
even help with housework. Kris Pister, a University of California physicist, envisions what he calls smart
dust-nanobots that move around the house at night, eating dirt and generally cleaning up.

Such things are possible in your lifetime-all because scientists are now "thinking small."

Left: Mesoscopic Physics Group/University of Manchester; Right: Kris Pister

Left: A closeup of a graphene semiconductor. 1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter. Right: The smallest experimental model of smart dust,
shown on a penny

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 Short Circuits - Comprehension Questions

Name: ___________________________________ Date: _______________

1. When was the transistor invented?

A. 1947
B. 1945
C. 2007
D. 2000

2. How does the author describe the changes transistors have undergone over time?
A. Transistors are used for the same things they were used for when first invented.
B. Transistors haven't changed much since they were invented.
C. Transistors have shrunk in size and become less useful.
D. Transistors have shrunk in size but increased in usefulness.

3. How do you think the author feels about the future of transistors and nanotechnology?
A. hopeful and excited
B. concerned and worried
C. cautious and uncertain
D. to little information to determine

4. Read the following sentences and answer the question below:

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, consider the amazing shrinking transistor! Watch it
contract a million times until it becomes a tiny dot visible only under a powerful
microscope!"

What does the word contract mean?

A. agreement or pact
B. form an agreement
C. shrink
D. to get or incur, as in a virus or disease

5. This passage is mostly about...

A. technology

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 Short Circuits - Comprehension Questions

B. nanotechnology
C. transistors
D. science

6. How are today's transistors different from the first ones that were invented?

7. What does the author mean by the use of the word "soup"?

8. The question below is an incomplete sentence. Choose the word that best completes
the sentence.

If scientists can figure out how to etch transistors onto graphene, __________ they will be
able to create much smaller and much faster computer chips.

A. but
B. then
C. so
D. however

9. Which building has scaffolding in front of it?

10. Would a single piece of wood provide enough scaffolding to hold up a small house?
Why or why not?

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