Latest Developments in Transistor Technology

What comes to your mind when you think of electronics?

Transistors!

I first heard this term as a transistor radio when I was a child. To be honest, I didn't really know what it was at that time.

Later, in high school, I joined the electronics department and saw what a transistor meant up close. We were making some simple circuits by soldering a lot of trinkets together.

There were also integrated circuits, tiny, multi-legged ones called transistors.

Integrated circuits contain many fabricated transistors, diodes, and resistors.

They are quite delicate pieces. If you hold it a little too long, will you burn out the soldering gun and then regret all the money you paid for it? Or will you regret all the effort you spent to finish the circuit because you couldn't tell whether it was working before the circuit was finished, or will you regret the time you spent trying to find the fault when you're done trying to figure out why the circuit isn't working? you will burn. So making electronic circuits is a difficult task.

Dealing with electronic circuits and producing things is enjoyable, but also tiring.

It's been years, I don't deal with such things anymore.

However, if the circuit works properly when you finish it and turn on the electricity, don't enjoy it.

You have spent a lot of effort and your effort has not been in vain. Look how well what you did works!

For example, you can receive nearby radio broadcasts with a tiny device! Even with an almost dead battery, the FM radio you created works for days without asking me if you want it.

Oops! Talat captain!

Let's see what's in that ear?

I did it in arm training, sir, transistor radio!

Don't you know that it is forbidden to deal with such things during study time?

You're grounded for the weekend! I'm deducting your discipline points too!

High school years are truly full of beautiful memories.

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So what is this thing we call transistor?

Its raw material is a semiconductor, silicon.

It has three legs, you control the current passing between the two legs with the middle leg.

In other words, it is actually a logic circuit, on and off, you control the higher current between the main legs with much less current you give to the control leg.

Let's say there is an adjustment lever that you can turn down the tap as you wish, just like the water flowing from the tap.

Diodes, resistors, capacitors and many other parts are used in the electronics world, but if there is a revolution, the invention of transistors has been the electronic revolution.

After all, computer technology, not radio technology, developed more.

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Today, transistors at almost atomic level are used in computer chips, or chip technology.

We say chip, but what we call chip is actually the integrated circuit that I used a lot in the electronics department in high school.

Today, they can place so many transistors in those tiny integrated circuits that the heat produced by the resistance of that chip due to the current passing through it becomes a huge problem.

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Yes, transistor means semiconductor in a sense.

Silicon element (silicon in English!) is used as a semiconductor in chip technology.

What is silicon?

The fine white sand we know, like the one found at the seaside, is pure white fine sand. The main ingredient of that sand is silicon. It is also the element from which we make glass. It is shown as "Si" in the periodic table and is the element with atomic number 14. It is found everywhere.

However, at the latest point in chip technology, the chemical properties of silicon are no longer sufficient for heat resistance for so many transistor circuits. Okay, it is a good semiconductor, but its heat resistance is no longer sufficient.

Therefore, we have not been able to make computers faster and more capable for a long time.

Computer technology has almost reached its limits!

Okay, computers that can perform faster operations with software rather than hardware, that is, with new operating system programs, are being released every day.

New chips are also used in these computers.

However, the chips made do not actually have any significant differences from the previous model.

With some layout changes, the circuits inside them are artificially enabled to perform faster operations, that's all.

In reality, much smaller transistors are needed, many more transistors must be fitted into the chip. Chips that will meet today's needs must work much faster.

This means much more heat production!

The chips are burning from pushing so hard.

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Then we use another material other than silicon!

Isn't there another substance with more heat resistance?

It will be both a semiconductor and have greater heat resistance!

Is there such an item?

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I have been writing some elements on the periodic table for a while.

In fact, what immediately comes to my mind is the element boron, which is our local and national ore.

As far as I know, the heat resistance of boron is much higher than many elements.

However, I do not know whether boron is a semiconductor or not.

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In the video I watched, it was said that quantum mechanics comes into play in transistors that are miniaturized to atomic level, and a new method, or technology, called "spintronics" was mentioned.

Spintronic, not electronic!

In other words, they are logic circuits that work with spin properties, rather than circuits that work with the charges of electrons.

Electrons also have the property of spin, that is, they spin around themselves, in a sense, like spinning tops.

Although it is not exactly like the spin of a top, this feature called spin is a feature that ensures that the electron does not fall into the atomic nucleus.

I will also prepare an article explaining this subject sometime.

The quantum world contains many mysteries.

It is necessary to investigate what this spintronic is.

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Although this spintronic technology is currently in the examination and testing phase in laboratory environments, experiments are continuing with new elements or some composite materials in classical transistor technology.

One of the substances that stands out in these experiments is the graphene substance I just mentioned.

What is graphene?

Carbon! Its only difference from the carbon we know is that the carbon atoms have a special hexagonal arrangement.

As you know, we have come across this article before when talking about battery technologies.

Graphene is a material that is much more resistant to heat than silicon atoms.

But we have a problem with graphene, graphene is not a good semiconductor!

Transistor technology requires the material used to be a good semiconductor.

It is said that the semiconductor properties of graphene are quite low and therefore the experiments carried out with graphene have not been fully successful yet.

However, there are graphene chips available on the market.

The technology used in these chips was to provide a feature similar to this semiconductor feature with special nanotubes made of graphene, and it is said that it is not a very effective chip.

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Of course, cooling systems are also used to solve this heating problem, but it is not possible to use fans for cooling purposes in handheld computers such as mobile phones, and even if there are laptops such as laptops, this cooling is a troublesome task in terms of battery endurance and therefore cooling with a fan is not possible. is not preferred.

Research is on solving this problem without cooling.

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Here is a material that is both semiconductor and has greater heat resistance: silicon carbonate, that is, a composite material.

Now, the use of silicon carbonate in chip technology is being considered, and since silicon carbonate is a composite of graphene and silicon, its heat resistance is 10 times higher than pure silicon.

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It seems that in the near future, computer chips will rise again in terms of speed and processing capacity.

It seems that it will now be possible to make chips with at least 10 times more heat resistance.

I don't know exactly what the relationship is between heat resistance and heat production due to speed. Maybe the speed can be increased by 10 times, or maybe it increases much more.

Or perhaps when the speed doubles, heat production increases tenfold.

There was no information about this in the source I looked at.

Still, I wanted to let you know so that you can be ready for new chips with much faster and more capacity.

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By the way, I really think it would be beneficial for our people to think at least a little about the boron element.

Who knows, maybe we will make a breakthrough in computer technologies. Is boron a semiconductor?

With love and respect to everyone from Moscow.