Transformation: nanotechnology—challenges in transistor design and future technologies

Abstract

© 2017, Der/die Autor(en). The transistor is one of the key inventions of modern society which have paved the way for innovative technologies being so ubiquitous in everyday life. Due to their economic importance and the pressure to keep production costs low while simultaneously increasing efficiency, transistors have been scaled to the deca-nanometer regime during the last decades. This excessive downscaling of device dimensions has now reached several physical limits, whereby transistor design and fabrication have been challenged numerous times. Although some of these challenges have been overcome by the use of new materials and cleverly designed device geometries, a lot of additional effort must be put into the research of innovative nanotechnologies in order to open up for new opportunities. In this work, we summarize recent developments in transistor technology and give a short overview of possible future technologies.