Thanks for your comment
Hi dduggerbiocepts,
I stated that it was embedded in its silicon bed. If you want more details on exactly how it works, the SF Chron/Bloomberg story, which is titled "Transistor Made Using a Single Atom May Help Beat Moore's Law" states, "The atom was etched into a silicon bed with 'gates' to control electrical flow and metallic contacts to apply voltage."
The Times story, which is titled "Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom," gives some background on recent advances that led up to this one: "There have been a series of recent technical advances that suggest that engineers will not hit a wall ending the advance in computer performance any time soon. In January, the Purdue and New South Wales researchers reported in the journal Science that they were able to create silicon nanowires that were just a single atom thick and four atoms wide by assembling thin strands of phosphorus atoms.
Combining the two advances indicates that they have made progress at assembling the basic building blocks of a new ultra-small generation of nanoelectronics that would be assembled from the bottom up."
Laura
