Researchers Martin Margala, Yonathan Shapir, Paul Ampadu, and Marc Feldman are developing the Ballistic Deflection Transistor:
The Ballistic Deflection Transistor (BDT) should produce far less heat and run far faster than standard transistors because it does not start and stop the flow of its electrons the way conventional designs do. It resembles a roadway intersection, except in the middle of the intersection sits a triangular block. From the “south” an electron is fired, as it approaches the crossroads, it passes through an electrical field that pushes the electron slightly east or west. When the electron reaches the middle of the intersection, it bounces off one side of the triangle block and is deflected straight along either the east or west roads. In this way, if the electron current travels along the east road, it may be counted as a zero, and as a one if it travels down the west road.A traditional transistor registers a “one” as a collection of electrons on a capacitor, and a “zero” when those electrons are removed. Moving electrons on and off the capacitor is akin to filling and emptying a bucket of water. The drawback to this method is that it takes time to fill and empty that bucket. That refill time limits the speed of the transistor—the transistors in today’s laptops run at perhaps two gigahertz, meaning two billion refills every second. A second drawback is that these transistors produce immense amounts of heat when that energy is emptied.
The BDT design should also be able to resist much of the electrical noise present in all electronic devices because the noise would only be present in the electrical “steering” field, and calculations show the variations of the noise would cancel themselves out as the electron passes through.