![]() ![]() "Unlike our earlier works on silicon surround gate nano vacuum transistors, we have flipped the orientation this time to vertical instead of a horizontal transistor," Meyyappan explained. The only difference was that he replaced the semiconductor channel, which in MOSFETs is placed between the source and the drain, with an empty channel. When fabricating the nanoscale vacuum channel transistor, Jinwoo Han, the researcher responsible for the design and fabrication, followed a similar process to that employed when building conventional MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors). We have combined the best of vacuum physics and modern integrated circuit manufacturing to produce nanoscale vacuum transistors to overcome the above shortcomings." ![]() "Typically, radiation shielding or advanced radiation-aware circuit design would be needed, all of which are expensive, time consuming and result in hardware that is not the state-of-the-art. "Off-the-shelf-electronics have very little use for space missions because of the impact of radiation," Meyya Meyyappan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. Fabricating this type of transistor on the wafer scale could ultimately enable their widespread use, making them a viable alternative to solid-state electronics. In a recent study, researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center have demonstrated that nanoscale vacuum channel transistors can be fabricated on silicon carbide wafers. For instance, they typically enable faster operation, better noise immunity and greater stability in extreme or harsh environments. Although vacuum tubes are now rarely used in the development of electronics, they have several important advantages over transistors.
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