Scientists create world's first molecular transistor

WASHINGTON. December 24. KAZINFORM A group of scientists have succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

The team, which includes researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, will publish their findings in the Dec. 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The team, including Mark Reed, professor of engineering and applied science at Yale, showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.

The researchers were able to manipulate the molecule's different energy states depending on the voltage they applied to it through the contacts. By manipulating the energy states, they were able to control the current passing through the molecule.

"It's like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule's different energy states," Reed said. "We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high."

In this way, the team was able to use the molecule in much the same way as regular transistors are used.

The work builds on previous research Reed did in the 1990s, which demonstrated that individual molecules could be trapped between electrical contacts. Since then, he and Takhee Lee, a former Yale postdoctoral associate and now a professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, developed additional techniques over the years that allowed them to "see" what was happening at the molecular level; Kazinform cites Xinhua.

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