Recently in material science news from China we hear that [Hailin Peng] and his team at Peking University just made the world’s fastest transistor and it’s not made of silicon. Before we tell you about this transistor made from bismuth here’s a whirlwind tour of the history of the transistor.

The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT, such as NPN and PNP) was developed soon after the point-contact transistor which was developed at Bell Labs in 1947. Then after Resistor-Transistor Logic (RTL) came Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL) made with BJTs. The problem with TTL was too much power consumption.

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