Vacuum-tube technology is revisited to further shrink electronic circuits
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029876
New York Times : More than a century ago, the invention of the vacuum tube kicked off an electronics revolution. However, the tubes were big and bulky, and by the 1970s, they were replaced by the transistor. One problem with the transistor design is that the smaller the transistor gets, the more it leaks electrons because of a phenomenon called quantum tunneling. Now Axel Scherer of Caltech and his coworkers are developing a new take on the old vacuum-tube technology. Scherer’s team uses the quantum tunneling effect as the switch to control the flow of electrons in tiny metal vacuum tubes. The new tubes use less power and work faster than current transistor-based chips, so they could have many applications, such as in space and aviation.
