EAST FISHKILL, N.Y.--IBM Corp. today announced development of a new double-gate transistor structure, which the company says move such a device from "purely theoretical to a structure that shows potential for actual use in chips in the future."

The disclosure is contained in 20 technical papers being presented by IBM at this week's International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C., and the announcement comes as efforts increase in the chip industry to find successors to conventional CMOS transistors as feature sizes begin to reach the limits of today's materials, processes and circuit designs. IBM said it has been able to overcome problems with previous double-gate transistor concepts, such as electrical leakage, high-energy demands and poor electrical flow.

Other chip makers are also hotly pursuing next-generation transistor concepts as well. Last week, for example, Intel Corp. announced development of a new transistor--dubbed "TeraHertz"--which is built on thin-layer silicon-on-insulator (SOI) with using a fully depleted substrate design for 10-to-20-GHz microprocessors later this decade (see Nov. 25 story). Also last week, the release of the 2001 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) cited double-gate transistors as one of the potential successors for today's CMOS transistor designs along with ultra-thin SOI and band-engineered transistors, which will use modified materials (see Nov. 29 story).

IBM said its double-gate transistor device can carry twice the electrical current, operate at up to twice the speed and be reduced in size well below today's conventional transistors. The company said the breakthrough was made possible by a series of innovations in new device designs and materials, such as SOI. IBM said its know-how in SOI allowed scientists to alter the design of the transistor in ways not possible before, while still allowing them to be built on conventional manufacturing lines.

"SOI is changing the rules in semiconductors," said Bijan Davari, vice president of semiconductor development at IBM Microelectronics. "Other than getting smaller, the basic transistor has largely gone unchanged for decades, but it has now been shrunk nearly to a point where it will cease to function," he noted.

IBM predicts that the need for new improved transistor structures, such as the double-gate design, will be needed in five-to-10 years. In the double-gate transistor, the channel is surrounded by two gates, doubling control of the current and enabling significantly smaller, faster and lower-power circuits, said IBM.