“The semiconductor industry was excited by the development of the junctionless transistor as it could represent simpler manufacturing processes of transistors. Considering that there are approximately 2 billion transistors on a single microprocessor, any improvement in the performance or structure of the transistor is always hugely significant for the semiconductor industry. Once we had developed the junctionless transistor our attention went towards making it even smaller. We have succeeded in making it at 50 nanometres, which is 20 times smaller than the transistors that were published in Nature Nanotechnology”, explains Professor Jean-Pierre Colinge, Tyndall National Institute.

Today’s electronic devices are power hungry and feature hungry. The electronics industry is looking for ways to pack more features into their devices while making them more energy efficient.

“The new smaller junctionless transistor is now 30% more energy efficient and outperforms current transistors on the market. Working with my colleagues in the Theory Group at Tyndall, we had predicted that the transistor could perform on a smaller scale and I am happy to say that we were correct in our predictions. It can be difficult to imagine the actual size of a transistor. However, if we look at a strand of our hair and imagine that the 50 nanometer junctionless transistor made in Tyndall is 2,000 times smaller, we can perhaps get a better idea of just what size scale we are working on”, says Colinge.

Nanoweek began yesterday January 31st and is a week-long programme of activities to promote Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Ireland. Nanoweek brings together a wide range of events to raise public awareness of the potential of nanoscience to improve our quality of life.  Nanoweek is an initiative of NanoNet Ireland which combines two major consortia: INSPIRE, funded by the HEA, is comprised of internationally leading researchers across ten third level institutions and coordinated by CRANN (TCD), the Science Foundation Ireland funded Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology. The Competence Centre for Applied Nanotechnology (CCAN), funded by Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Agency, includes both leading multi-national companies such as Intel, Analog Devices and Seagate and indigenous Irish companies such as Creganna, Aerogen, Audit Diagnostics and Proxy Biomedical.  CCAN, hosted by the Tyndall National Institute at UCC and CRANN, together with INSPIRE represents an impressive Nano-ecosystem for Ireland.

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