Engineers at the University of Southampton have set a world record, running a bipolar transistor at a heat-inducing 110GHz.
Boffins at the university's School of Electronics and Computer Science discovered that by adding fluorine "implants" to the base of a bi-polar transistor, it could be made narrower, allowing more rapid electron transit and higher frequencies.
The fluorine disperses a phenomenon known as "boron diffusion", which demands larger, and therefore slower, micro-componentry. The team believes there is potential to reduce boron diffusion by a further 50 percent.
"By using fluorine implants, the transistor can operate at a higher frequency which means it will be twice as fast as it was before," said Professor Peter Ashburn, who lead the research team. "This means that the electronics industry will be able to achieve better performance at little extra cost."
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