Like a leaky faucet, today’s transistors may be in the “off” position but are never fully closed, allowing small amounts of energy to steadily escape. But with nanotechnology, a far tighter “seal” may be achieved, greatly increasing efficiency, said the project’s coordinator, Adrian Ionescu of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
“It’s old technology,” Mr. Ionescu said of the current transistors, which are based on designs that date back decades. “What we want to use is nanoscience and nanowires, so when you want to close it, you do close it.”
For consumer devices, success could mean cellphone batteries that last 10 times longer than today’s models, and computers and other devices that use virtually no power when in stand-by mode.
“Our vision is to share this research to enable manufacturers to build the holy grail in electronics, a computer that utilizes negligible energy when it’s in sleep mode, which we call the zero-watt PC,” Mr. Ionescu said.
More efficient transistors could significantly reduce the power used not only by consumer electronics but also the energy-guzzling supercomputers that run the world’s computer networks and data centers.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/a-nano-solution-to-vampire-energy/