It is known that transistors made of silicon are the main “bricks” from which all modern electronics are made. According to Gordon Moore’s famous law, the number of transistors in modern processors should double every two years. Unfortunately, this law has not been observed for some time, even given the continued significant reduction in the size of transistors. Put even a large number of the smallest transistors on a chip chip and immediately calculate the energy consumption, the amount of heat released, etc. serious problems will arise.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have designed a new type of transistor that is not made of silicon and is much more efficient than its silicon counterparts. In conventional transistors, the electrical potential at the control electrode, the gate, controls the current through the transistor channel. But in the new type of transistor, instead of current, electrons are rotated through the channel.

An important component of the new transistor is a carbon-shaped graphene sheet whose crystal lattice has a monoatomic thickness. This layer plays a key role due to a unique property of graphene in that they can maintain the spin direction of the electrons moving in it for a long time. Under the graphene layer in the structure of the transistor, there is a layer of chromium oxide, which acts as a kind of stabilizer.

When a positive control voltage is applied to certain elements of the transistor structure, the spin of the electrons in the chromium oxide and graphene layer is aligned to the right. The applied negative voltage causes the opposite effect – the spins of the electrons are aligned in the opposite direction. These two cases are easy to detect and can be associated with 1 and 0 binary code.

The researchers are currently conducting a series of mathematical simulations, the results of which show that the parameters of such magnetoelectric transistors far exceed the capabilities of silicon transistors. The use of new types of transistors in the field of storage devices is particularly great, due to some features the total number of transistors in such devices can be reduced by 75 percent, which can reduce the global energy consumption of digital devices by 5 percent. And a very nice bonus is that magnetoelectric transistors can remember and store their state even in the off state.

Unfortunately, only the first prototypes of magnetoelectric transistors exist in the world today, and researchers still have a long and difficult road to travel before such transistors can be widely used in electronics.