Electronics out of thin air: MAGIC - Metal–Air Gated Integrated Circuits

我们不断寻求更快、更轻、更节能的设备。这个项目将创造一种新的电子设备，重新发明大约一个世纪前使电子学成为可能的真空管，并将它们缩小到纳米级领域。这种器件被称为真空通道晶体管，晶体管是所有电子器件的关键功能元件。在纳米电子学的极小尺寸尺度上，载流子移动的距离非常短。这样可以避免碰撞，从而实现高速传输。这种虚拟真空环境可能使电子产品的速度比目前的硅基技术快数千倍，为半导体行业面临的挑战提供了解决方案。

We constantly seek faster, lighter, and energy-efficient devices. This project will create a new class of electronic devices, re-inventing vacuum tubes that enabled electronics almost a century ago, and scaling them down to the nanoscale realm. The devices are termed vacuum channel transistors, and transistors are the critical functional element of all electronics. At the extremely small size scales for nanoelectronics, the charge carriers travel very short distances. This avoids collisions enabling extremely high-speed transport. Such a virtual vacuum environment can potentially enable electronics thousands of times faster than the current silicon-based technology, providing a solution to the challenges faced by the semiconductor industry.