Single Atom Transistor

A team of scientists have created the world's first functioning single-atom transistor, which could prove a critical building block toward the development of super-fast smart phones and computers. They have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal and this atomic accuracy may yield the elementary building block for a future quantum computer. A single phosphorus atom is just 0.1 nanometres across, which would significantly reduce the size of processors made using this technique, although it may be many years before single-atom processors actually are manufactured. However, the single-atom transistor does have one serious limitation - it must be kept very cold, at least as cold as liquid nitrogen, or minus 196 Celsius.