Article content continued

“The really weird thing is in some rare cases … you push harder, and the current goes slower instead of faster.”

Wolkow’s team was able to determine the exact atomic structure that creates NDR. He said the potential monetary value of a hybrid transistor or NDR circuit has been well-established for decades, but no one understood how to control the effect.

The discovery could lead to building smaller, cheaper and faster computers, prompting Wolkow to apply for a provisional patent in order to protect the findings.

“We’re increasingly careful about that,” he said.

NDR was first observed in 1958. It would lead to the invention of a type of semiconductor called the Esaki Diode, the brainchild of Japanese physicist Leo Esaki. He would later win a Nobel Prize for his work, but the technology remained out of reach because mass production was impossible, Wolkow said.

“It was heralded as a huge development, but it never played out.”

Several teams of scientists have since tried to control the effect.

“The gizmos they made to do it were working and they understood how they work but those devices were kind of unwieldy,” Wolkow said. “What we’ve done is figured out a way to get that weird behaviour … from a single atom … we have now really nailed it down.”

It has been a long journey for Wolkow, who first observed NDR in 1987.

“Persistence pays off,” he said with a laugh, adding that the team has been focused on the project for the past year. He said a cluster of factors, including sophisticated instruments, better theoretical understanding and the right opportunity, led to the discovery.