As the digital world pushes software capabilities to astonishing new heights, especially in artificial intelligence and supercomputing, hardware has found itself in a game of catch-up. The bottleneck? The age-old transistor, the silent workhorse of modern electronics, is bound by the limitations of silicon and electrons. But a groundbreaking development may be set to shatter that barrier.
A team of researchers led by the University of Arizona, in collaboration with international scientists, has engineered a revolutionary transistor that trades electricity for light, and it’s rewriting the rules of speed.
Conventional transistors, limited by the physics of their materials, are nearing their theoretical speed limits. The University of Arizona’s new creation flips this paradigm. By harnessing ultrafast laser pulses and the unique properties of graphene, the team has developed a light-powered transistor capable of processing information at speeds measured in petahertz—that’s over a million times faster than today’s processors.
The secret lies in controlling electrons with light, specifically, laser pulses lasting a mere 638 attoseconds (an attosecond is one quintillionth of a second). This new mechanism allows electronic signals to move almost instantaneously, thanks to the quantum phenomenon known as tunneling. As electrons bypass traditional barriers with no delay, the device achieves staggering performance benchmarks.
At the heart of this leap is graphene, a material prized for its strength, flexibility, and electrical conductivity. However, graphene’s symmetry typically negates internal electric currents. The researchers overcame this by adding a silicon layer to break the symmetry and firing finely tuned laser pulses to control electron motion. This subtle disruption allowed a single electron to tunnel through in real-time, something previously only theorized.
Reflecting on the unexpected success, Dr. Mohammed Hassan, the project’s lead physicist, remarked: “Going into the lab, you always anticipate what will happen – but the real beauty of sscience isthe little things that happen, which lead you to investigate more.”
What they’ve built is no longer theoretical. Using a commercial graphene phototransistor modified with silicon, the device achieved real-world performance at unprecedented speeds. Hassan hailed it as “the world’s fastest petahertz quantum transistor.”
This transistor doesn’t rely on voltage but instead on bursts of laser light. In essence, it’s not just faster—it’s a completely new way of thinking about how hardware can process information. This innovation could bridge the yawning gap between today’s rapid software evolution and sluggish hardware advances.
“We have experienced a huge leap forward in the development of technologies like artificial intelligence software,” Hassan noted, “but the speed of hardware development does not move as quickly. By leaning on the discovery of quantum computers, we can develop hardware that matches the current revolution in information technology software.”
What makes this discovery even more promising is its practical potential. The transistor functions under standard room conditions, eliminating one of the biggest barriers to commercial viability. The team is now collaborating with Tech Launch Arizona to patent the innovation and explore industry partnerships.
“I hope we can collaborate with industry partners to realize this petahertz-speed transistor on a microchip. The University of Arizona is already known for the world’s fastest electron microscope, and we would like to also be known for the first petahertz-speed transistor.”
The study is published in Nature Communications.
