OREANDA-NEWS. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) has succeeded for the first time in speeding up one-by-one transfer of electrons via a charge-confining trap level in silicon transistors.

Since a flow of electrons accurately transferred in one direction leads to a high-accuracy current flow, the technique is expected to lead to high-accuracy current sources (current standards*3), which will contribute to the recently proposed redefinition of the ampere (the base unit of electric current). In addition, if we realize a device with much higher accuracy than traditional electrical standards, NTT can contribute to the electrical standards field and the measurement instrument industry.

This work will be reported in the UK science journal "Nature Communications" on the 6th of October, 2014.

This work was partly supported by the Funding Program for Next Generation World-Leading Researchers of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (GR 103).