EARTH.COM - Today’s flagship processor packs more than 100 billion transistors, yet squeezing them any closer is turning design into a wrestling match with quantum physics.
As the footprints of silicon switches approach the dimensions of a few dozen atoms, stray electrons tunnel across barriers that once looked rock‑solid, wasting power and scrambling signals.
Physicists are asking whether that unruly behavior can be steered instead of suppressed, and a new study from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), claims the answer is yes.
The team shows that by shaping atom‑perfect silicon clusters they can turn electron flow off and on through quantum interference, the same wave effect that makes light cancel itself in noise‑canceling headphones.
How silicon molecule switches current
Tim Su of UC Riverside and colleagues built their switch by assembling silicon atoms into a molecule called sila‑adamantane, a miniature copy of the crystal motif found in commercial chips.
“We found that when tiny silicon structures are shaped with high symmetry, they can cancel out electron flow like noise‑canceling headphones,” said Su.