How Do Transistors Work? At its core, a transistor is an electronic gatekeeper. It controls the flow of electric current through a semiconductor material.

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Without transistors the modern world would simply not exist. But how do they work, and how do modern, atomic sized versions compare with the originals?

Transistors are the magical electronic components that make your computer, smartphone and virtually every other gadget on the planet function—but how the hell do they work? One word: semiconductors.

Scalability: Transistors can be mass-produced very efficiently, allowing for the creation of complex integrated circuits containing billions of transistors.

A schematic of a field effect transistor on the left, and the new light-based transistor on the right. The science behind the transistor itself is pretty simple.

Triple transistor: Single graphene transistors like this one can be made to operate in three modes and perform functions that usually require multiple transistors in a circuit.

The work is described in ‘ Compact source-gated transistor analog circuits for ubiquitous sensors ‘, published by the IEEE and available in full without payment.