Lund: Energy-efficient transistor based on nanotech

Development opportunity

Researchers at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University, Sweden, working with Lund spin-off QuNano, have developed reduced-size transistors in which electrons circulate more easily, avoiding the generation of excess energy and overheating.

Lars-Erik Wernersson, professor of solid-state physics at Lund, says the energy-efficient transistor “should be able to reduce energy consumption in mobile phones and computers, for example, so they wouldn’t have to be recharged so often”. He adds:  “What’s more, it can pave the way for communicating in frequencies that are too high for today’s technologies.”

Nanotechnology has allowed Wernersson to construct transistors according to a bottom-up principle using indium arsenide, in a model “where the electrons move more easily compared with silicon, the conventional semiconductor material in transistors”, he explains.

Wernersson and his team intend to develop transistors that can communicate in frequencies reaching 60GHz, six times those of existing electrical appliances. “With 60GHz you can only communicate across short differences and not through walls, for instance. But this new frequency can rationalise wireless communication in the home, for example when you download a film or communicate between TVs and projectors. We know for sure that such electric appliances will be integrated more and more in the future,” he says.

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research has offered Wernersson SEK24.5 million (around €2.6 million) to fund the development of new wireless circuits using this nanotechnology-based technology.