On Wednesday I covered the announcement from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and IBM that they along with host of other European research institutes were intending to develop better transistors that would eliminate the wasted current that drips through transistor gates.
The project has been dubbed Steeper based on its intentions to create steep slope transistors that exhibit an abrupt change when switching between on and off states.
Oddly, considering my recent preoccupation with improving mobile phone batteries and rechargeable batteries in general, I neglected to point out that one of the side benefits of conserving power in electronic devices is that the batteries will last longer. This was pointed out to me in a flurry of tweets on Twitter claiming “Cellphone Battery Life to Improve 10x Thanks to Nanotechnology.”
In my defense for not pointing this out in my original blog entry, I should note that the technology will not improve battery technology, but just improve the electronic devices that the batteries are charging so that they use less energy and drain less power from the batteries.
Dexter Johnson is a contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum, with a focus on nanotechnology.