New transistors switch at nanosecond speeds and deliver remarkable durability — ferroelectric material transistor could revolutionize electronics, say MIT scientists

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Promising technology could impact electronics in a big way.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team that created a new ferroelectric material in 2021 has used the same substance to build a transistor. This novel ultra-thin transistor is claimed to be superior to those used in today’s electronics. Specifically, the scientists boast of rapid nanosecond switching speeds and remarkable durability.

“In my lab, we primarily do fundamental physics,” says Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics who led the team behind the breakthrough (via Interesting Engineering). “This is one of the first, and perhaps most dramatic, examples of how very basic science has led to something that could have a major impact on applications.”

The most notable ability of this new transistor is the speed at which it can change its charge state. Current transistor technology switch states in the order of hundreds of nanoseconds, but this new material could potentially cut this down to a fraction of that. This is crucial for high-performance computing, especially as AI technologies require more and more data to process.

Since the material is so thin, manufacturers could potentially pack them more densely than current semiconductors. Aside from getting more performance per area, it would also lead to higher energy efficiency — a crucial factor in the future of AI processing, especially as power limitations are now serving as the primary bottleneck in expanding data centers.

Another important advancement the MIT team discovered is the increased durability offered by the new ferroelectric material. Current SSDs have a limited lifespan, with the top-of-the-line models capable of writing 700TB for every 1TB capacity. On the other hand, this transistor showed no signs of degradation even after 100 billion switches, potentially giving birth to archival flash storage.

At the moment, the team has made just a single transistor to demonstrate its capabilities. Thus it still faces several challenges before this technology makes its way to everyday devices. “There are a few problems. But if you solve them, this material fits in so many ways into potential future electronics,” says Ray Ashoori, a member of the group who built the transistor. “It’s very exciting.

Cornell University assistant professor Kenji Yasuda, who is the co-first author of the study, also added, “If people could grow these materials on the wafer scale, we could create many, many more.”  

Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    Current transistor technology switch states in the order of hundreds of nanoseconds, but this new material could potentially cut this down to a fraction of that.
    This would seem at odds with having CPUs that clock at 6 GHz and above. That's a mere 0.167 ns per cycle. Please explain.

    The article said:
    Current SSDs have a limited lifespan, with the top-of-the-line models capable of writing 700TB for every 1TB capacity. On the other hand, this transistor showed no signs of degradation even after 100 billion switches, potentially giving birth to archival flash storage.
    No, you're confusing endurance with offline data retention. They're mostly unrelated.
    Reply
  • JTWrenn
    bit_user said:
    This would seem at odds with having CPUs that clock at 6 GHz and above. That's a mere 0.167 ns per cycle. Please explain.
    Wonder if this is just poorly explained on what this material is for by saying transistors. Possibly a non volatile storage transistor? I think this is not a processor transistor which are much faster as they don't store anything really...their cache does but that's a different thing.

    Still oddly written and poorly explained.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    JTWrenn said:
    Wonder if this is just poorly explained on what this material is for by saying transistors. Possibly a non volatile storage transistor?
    Unless it's not? The original article doesn't say anything about it being specific to SSDs or nonvolatile storage. They do touch on it, but they also mention application areas of "high-performance computing and data processing".
    https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/mit-ultrathin-ferroelectric-transistor
    I think the Toms author just padded out this article with flights of fancy, since the original article was already pretty short.

    JTWrenn said:
    I think this is not a processor transistor which are much faster as they don't store anything really...their cache does but that's a different thing.
    A single transistors doesn't store anything. A memristor does, but those are fundamentally different.

    In SRAM, it seems that a network of transistors is used to trap charge, if I understand correctly. However, DRAM cells employ capacitors for charge storage.
    Reply
  • deesider
    The original Science article that is the source of the article is here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp3575
    The title is "Ultrafast high-endurance memory based on sliding ferroelectrics" - so the subject is certainly memory rather than transistors used for logic, and it does reference non-volatile memory.

    Unfortunately though, I don't have access to the full article.
    Reply