Via physorg
Since their development in the 1940s, transistors have been at the heart of computers and other modern electronic devices. Transistors – whose job is to start, stop, or amplify electric current – come in all shapes, sizes and materials, depending on the application. Recently, scientists have fabricated a new variation: a micro-sized plasma transistor.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed the microplasma transistor by integrating a conventional microcavity plasma device with an electron emitter. Kuo-Feng (Kevin) Chen and Professor J. Gary Eden, Director of the Laboratory for Optical Physics and Engineering, published their study in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. As Eden explained, a plasma transistor could one day have certain advantages compared with conventional transistors.
