Topological matters: Toward a new kind of transistor

Phys.org  December 10, 2018
An international team of researchers (Australia, Singapore, USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign) has demonstrated electronic switching in ultrathin sodium bismuthide (Na3Bi), a topological Dirac semimetal that can carry a charge with nearly zero loss at room temperature. They demonstrated switching by subjecting the material to a low-current electric field. They found a way to grow it extremely thin, down to a single layer arranged in a honeycomb pattern of sodium and bismuth atoms, and to control the thickness of each layer they create. Topological transistors that could have significant impact on computation…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

A tiny terahertz laser designed by MIT researchers is the first to reach three key performance goals at once: high power, tight beam, and broad frequency tuning. Courtesy of the researchers