Topological Matters: Toward a New Kind of Transistor

X-ray experiments at Berkeley Lab provide first demonstration of room temperature switching in ultrathin material that could serve as a 'topological transistor'. Billions of tiny transistors supply the processing power in modern smartphones, controlling the flow of electrons with rapid on-and-off switching. But continual progress in packing more transistors into smaller devices is pushing toward the physical limits of conventional materials. Common inefficiencies in transistor materials cause energy loss that results in heat buildup and shorter battery life, so researchers are in hot pursuit of alternative materials that allow devices to operate more efficiently at lower power. Now, an experiment conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has demonstrated, for the first time, electronic switching in an exotic, ultrathin material that can carry a charge with nearly zero loss at room temperature. Researchers demonstrated this switching when subjecting the material to a low-current electric field. The team, which was led by researchers at Monash University in Australia and included Berkeley Lab scientists, grew the material from scratch and studied it with X-rays at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).