minimum size?

You might google on 'minimum feature size'. There are references to processes that could have structures of 20 - 50 nm. By comparison, the sort-of-size of an electron is 2.8 e-15m, or 7 million times smaller.

-- John

Interatomic spacing is around 0.1 to 0.2 nm. This means that a 20nm track only has a width of 100 atoms or so. It is certainly starting to get towards having to consider individual atoms. IIRC, there was a report somewhere about someone making a transistor that only had a single electron on the gate.

Also, in something like lithography, oxide thicknesses are smaller than the minimum feature size. In effect, on an IC, there is much better vertical resolution than horizontal resolution.

I do believe Charles Sheffield discussed this in one of his non-sf essays. It might have been in Borderlands of Science.

I do believe Charles Sheffield discussed this in one of his non-sf essays. It might have been in Borderlands of Science.