Modern computer chips hold tens of billions of transistors on a piece of silicon a few centimeters across.Making chips fasterand more efficient means fitting more transistors onto the same area, shrinking them toward the scale of individual atoms.
The problem is that silicon starts to misbehave as it gets thinner. Current leaks through transistors that should be switched off, and electrons move more sluggishly through channels only a few atoms thick.
Modern computer chips hold tens of billions of transistors on a piece of silicon a few centimeters across.Making chips fasterand more efficient means fitting more transistors onto the same area, shrinking them toward the scale of individual atoms.
The problem is that silicon starts to misbehave as it gets thinner. Current leaks through transistors that should be switched off, and electrons move more sluggishly through channels only a few atoms thick.
