Electronics

Water-based circuit concept switches much faster than semiconductors

The saltwater in the new circuit concept is fanned out through a custom nozzle, then an ultra-fast laser zaps it to change its conductive state
Adrian Buchmann
The saltwater in the new circuit concept is fanned out through a custom nozzle, then an ultra-fast laser zaps it to change its conductive state
Adrian Buchmann

Water is usually something you’d want to keep away from electronic circuits, but engineers in Germany have now developed a new concept for water-based switches that are much faster than current semiconductor materials.

Transistors are a fundamental component of electronic systems, and in a basic sense they process data by switching between conductive and non-conductive states – zeroes and ones – as the semiconductor materials in them encounter electrical currents. The speed of this switching (along with the number of transistors in a chip) is a primary factor in how fast a computer system can be.

Now, researchers at Ruhr University Bochum have developed a new type of circuit that can switch much faster than existing semiconductor materials. The key ingredient is, surprisingly, water, with iodide ions dissolved into it to make it salty. A custom-made nozzle fans this water out into a flattened jet only a few microns thick.

Next, a short but powerful laser pulse is fired into the water jet. This bumps electrons out of the dissolved salts, essentially boosting the conductivity of the water. A second laser can read back what state the water is in, providing the “on” and “off” options of an existing transistor.

Because the laser pulse is so fast, the water can switch states in a matter of picoseconds, which are trillionths of a second. This translates to potential computer speeds in the terahertz (THz) range – that’s 1,000 GHz, which is far faster than any existing semiconductor can switch.

Of course, this is just a concept at the moment, and exactly how water-based circuits could be practically scaled up remains to be seen, but it’s an intriguing idea nonetheless.

The research was published in the journal APL Photonics.

Source: Ruhr University Bochum

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6 comments
Daveb
Isn’t the water that got zapped, already down the drain an instant later? Also, how is this a circuit? I don’t get it.
mark34
So, instead of 'magic smoke' (which all electronic components contain) leaking out of failed circuits we might be looking for puddles...
Expanded Viewpoint
Yeah, it looks like a dumb way to just add more complexity to something that we're already doing very well, and by adding more steps into a process, the slowest part of it is your speed limiting factor. If the laser circuitry part of it isn't as fast as the water stream switching part is, then there's no real gain there. The integer with the lowest amount of decimal places, automatically wipes out the significance of any other integers with a higher amount of decimal places. Or don't they teach that anymore in the public school system?? So what, if the water stream switching part is so fast, if the rest of the circuitry can't keep up with it?
The Doubter
How's this useful? Yes, the water switches between conductive and non-conductive states in picoseconds, but what about the time required to sense the state by some kind of electrode arrangement, the ion propagation time etc?
TechGazer
Even if they managed to trigger the states in picodots of salty water, the read&write lasers will be bigger than the latest transistors. Transmission line length is also a speed limiter. The lasers also need a transistor (or more than one) to operate.

I've seen other news items about super-fast switches, using single molecules, but those never turned into a product, probably for the same reason: the necessary read/write circuitry makes it overly large and slow.
DavidStonier-Gibson
An experiment well-designed to extend a useless research grant.