Science and Technology New transistors Mechanical advantage

科技 新型晶体管 机械优势

Two new types of transistor may lead to simpler, more efficient computers

两种新型晶体管或许会导致更加便捷高效计算机的出现

WHEN baking a cake it helps to have all the ingredients within reach, rather than wasting time and energy making frequent trips to the pantry. Something similar is true of the logic circuits in computers’ microprocessors. These could be made faster, and would consume less energy, if they were able to store information themselves instead of fetching it from separate memory chips or hard drives.

当你在烧烤蛋糕的时候，它有会让所有的一切都变得触手可及，而不是让你在食品柜繁琐的开关之间浪费时间与精力。 这也同样会真正应用于电脑微处理器中的某些逻辑电路。 如果这些微处理器自己能够储存一些信息，用来取代从原来相互独立的芯片或手工操作中获得的信息，它们的速度将会变得更快，能耗将会更低。

The problem is that the transistors used to make logic circuits hold their electronic state, and therefore any data they contain, only when powered up. The choice engineers face is thus between supplying continuous power to a transistor, so that it can retain its memory (which costs energy), and ferrying data that would otherwise be lost to and from so-called non-volatile memory devices that do not require continuous power (which costs time). Cracking this problem—so that transistors can act as their own non-volatile memory—would make all computers faster. It would be particularly valuable, though, for mobile devices. These could be made smaller and lighter, since they would require fewer components. And they could go for longer between charges.

问题是，用来制造逻辑电路的晶体管中保留着它们的电子态，因此当这些晶体管通电的时候，它们会包含任何可能的数据。 因此，工程师们面临的选择就是要么对晶体管提供一个持续的电源，让晶体管保持自己的记忆(这会耗费能源)，否则从所谓的非易失性半导体存储器中传输的数据就有可能丢失，不过它不需要持续的电源(这会消耗时间)。 解决这个问题——以便于让晶体管使用自身的非易失性半导体存储器——将会让所有的电脑运行速度更快。 虽然这对于移动设备来说，显得特别昂贵。 不过移动设备因此可以做得更小，更轻盈，因为它们需要的元件更小。 并且两次充电的时间间隔将会变得更长。

To this end, Hiroshi Mizuta of the University of Southampton, in England, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the National Institute for Material Science in Tsukuba, Japan, are proposing a marriage between two novel types of transistor that could hardly be more different. One, the atomic transistor, draws on the latest advances in nanoscience. The other, the mechanical transistor, sounds as if it has been lifted from the annals of the industrial revolution.

为此，英国南安普顿大学的Hiroshi Mizuta和日本筑波国立材料科学研究所的Tsuyoshi Hasegawa提出了将两种完全不同新型材料混合起来。 其中一种就是原子晶体管，它利用了最新的纳米科技。 另外一种就是机械晶体管，这听起来就像是从工业革命史册中发掘出来的玩意儿。

The atomic transistor works, as its name suggests, by shuffling individual atoms around within the device. The atoms in question are copper, and the result of the shuffling is to create or destroy a conductive pathway between two crucial bits of the transistor, the source and the drain, thus switching the device on or off. That is possible because this part of the transistor is made of tantalum pentoxide, a material whose atoms are arranged in a lattice which contains holes large enough for copper atoms to squeeze through.

原子晶体管的工作方式就像它名字所示的那样，是通过移动该元件内部的单个原子进行工作的。 这里所说的原子指的是铜原子，移动的结果主是在晶体管的两个十字位置构建或消除一个传导通路，它的源极和漏极因此就会开启或关闭。 这是有可能实现的，因为这部分晶体管是由五氧化二钽制造的——这种材料可以将它自身的原子排布在晶格中，这些晶格包括一些足够大的孔，可以让铜原子挤过去。

The mechanical transistor, more properly called a nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) transistor, creates and destroys the connection between source and drain mechanically. When a voltage is applied across two beamlike electrodes made of aluminium, which are separated by a gap of around 50 nanometres, charge builds up on each, creating an attractive force between them, until a critical point is reached. At that moment one of the electrodes flips towards the other, causing the two to make contact. This closes the circuit and turns the transistor on. Apply the opposite charge and the electrode flips back, breaking the circuit.

机械晶体管，更确切地可以称之为纳米电子机械系统(NEMS)晶体管，它可以在源极和漏极之间机械地构建或消除连接。 两个柱状的铝电极间隔约50纳米，当电压加在这两个电极之间时，它们就会相互通电，在二者之间会形成一股引力，直至达到一个临界点。 在达到临界点的那一刻，其中一个电极就会移向另一个电极， 这两个电极就会形成通路。 这样就会接通电路，打开晶体管。利用相反的电荷，电极就会复位，进而断开电路。

What makes these two very different types of transistor attractive is that both the copper and the aluminium stay put when the power is turned off. They can thus act as memories as well as processors. The "on" state represents one type of binary digit (a one, say) and the "off" state represents the other (zero). Dr Mizuta and Dr Hasegawa are therefore using the novel transistors to try to make the world’s first non-volatile processor chip.

这两种完全不同类型的晶体管如此吸引人的地方就在于断电后，如何让铜原子和铝电极待在原地。 它们可以应用于储存芯片和处理器。 "开"的状态表示二进制中的一个数字(就是"一")，"关"的状态可以表示另一个数字(即"零")。 Mizuta博士和Hasegawa博士因此都在使用新型的晶体管，力图制造出世界上第一个非易失性处理器芯片。

Ideally, such a chip would have only one sort of transistor, since that would mean it was much easier to manufacture. However, transistors come in two varieties, n-type (negative) and p-type (positive). Both are needed in a logic circuit, but atomic devices can be only n-type. The alternatives, then, are to make the circuit entirely out of NEMS transistors, or to mix the two by using atomic devices where an n-type transistor is needed and NEMS ones where a p-type is required.

理想的这种芯片将只有一种晶体管类型，因为这意味着它将会更加容易制造。 不过，晶体管却有两种，一种是N型(负)，一种是P型(正)。 逻辑电路都需要这两种晶体管，不过在原子设备中，只需要N型。 那么另一个方案就是完全用NEMS晶体管制造电路，或者是将利用N型晶体管的原子设备和利用P型晶体管的NEMS晶体管混合起来。

Dr Mizuta and Dr Hasegawa have opted for a mixture, because atomic transistors are much smaller than NEMS ones, and the saving of space outweighs the awkwardness of mixing them together. If their recipe works, it will mean far fewer electronic trips to the pantry and a quicker baking time for whatever answer the new chip is trying to cook up.

Mizuta博士和Hasegawa博士选择了二者的混合，因为原子晶体管比NEMS更加小巧，这样节省的空间就会消除二者的混合的尴尬。 如果他们的方案成功的话，这意味着食品柜中的开关将会大大减小，(无论任何口味的饭菜)实现更短的烹饪时间。