Metal nano-particles inherit semiconductor-like properties due to their small size

While the semiconductor industry heading towards the extremely challenging 5 nm nodes and down further, silicon becomes a tougher material to handle, that giving way to use III-V compound/wideband gap semiconductors and any new material such as graphene. Even, why not metals! Researchers at University of Hamburg could exploit the properties of metals, where metals in their nano particle form shows semiconductor like properties. Dr. Christian Klinke and team produced transistors by depositing metal nano particles as thin films of size one layer of nano particles, kind of atomic thick. The metal nano particles refused to show their metallic character under current flow but show energy gap due to Coulomb repulsion of the electrons among one another. The researchers could shift the gap energetically by using a controlling voltage, so that current can be switched on and off, just like a MOSFET. Though this is not a totally new approach, but the difference is instead of depositing individual nano particle structures, these researchers deposited nano particles as thin films, which is said to be a simpler process and reliable. The transistors made out of this process are called "Coulomb transistors".
All this invention does not matter, as long as it doesn...