First superconducting transistor promises PC revolution

NewScientist - December 3, 2008, by Paul Marks

THE world's first superconducting transistor, a long-standing goal for applied physicists, could lead to dramatically faster microchips.

Last year Andrea Caviglia and his colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland grew a single crystal containing two metal oxides, strontium titanate and lanthanum aluminate, as separate segments. At the interface of these materials, the team found a layer of free electrons called an electron gas (Science, vol 317, p 1196). At 0.3 kelvin - just above absolute zero - these electrons flow without resistance and so create a superconductor.

Now the same group says it can switch this superconductivity on and off by applying a voltage to the interface. The result is a superconducting version of the field effect transistor (FET) - a mainstay of digital electronics.

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