Lucent’s Bell Labs Builds Tiny Transistor

Lucent Technologies Inc.’s Bell Labs, the research lab that invented the transistor in 1947, announced the development of a tiny new transistor made of a simple cluster of organic molecules.

Although the technology won’t be ready for commercial use for several years, a trio of Bell Labs researchers have built a simple logic circuit using a pair of the organic transistors.

Most increases in computing speed stem from shrinking the size of individual transistors and the distance between them. Miniaturization shortens the path that electrons travel, thus boosting computing power.

Bell Labs’ original 1947 transistor measured about an inch in length. Its latest version, whose active portion is just a single molecule across, is about a millionth the size of a grain of sand, said laboratory spokesman Saswato Das.