Researchers at NIST and Brown University have discovered that ultracold transistors can serve as their own memory devices, eliminating the need for separate capacitor memory. At temperatures just above absolute zero (3K), impact ionization generates extra charges inside the transistor. Some of these charges become trapped in the transistor body, affecting current flow and providing a built-in memory state.
This discovery could lead to more compact control circuitry for low-temperature sensors and quantum information devices. Cold transistors could interface with and read out data from proposed solid-state qubits, which require extremely low temperatures. The memory effect persisted for several minutes, which is sufficient for quantum computing applications.
The researchers plan to explore the temperature range and speed of the memory effect in future work.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/07/ultracold-transistors-serve-their-own-memory-devices
Keywords: transistor, memory, cryogenic, temperature, quantum
