Original upload date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Thu, 02 Dec 2021 00:03:03 GMT
This animation represents an electrical current being switched on and off. Remarkably, the current is confined to a channel that is just one atom wide. Also, the switch is made of just one atom. When
...
the atom in the centre feels an electric field tugging at it, it loses its electron. Once that electron is lost, the many electrons in the body of the silicon (to the left) have a clear passage to flow through. When the electric field is removed, an electron gets trapped in the central atom, switching the current off.
This represents the latest work out of Robert Wolkow's lab at the University of Alberta. Learn more: https://www.ualberta.ca/science/science-news/2016/october/atomic-scale-manufacturing.
