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In reviewing the predictions by G.K. Teal for 2012, I am struck most by the accuracy of his vision. The year 1962 was at the very beginning of the electronics revolution. Silicon integrated circuits were but a gleam in the eyes of a select few, yet Teal saw clearly that modern electronics would be based, fundamentally and pervasively, on "tailor-making materials starting at the atomic level". Personally, I believe that the development of new materials and novel structures is going to be as important to the evolution of electronics over the next 15 years as it has in the past 35 years.

Summary form only given. Attention is given to a Stark effect transistor in which the emitter-collector current is controlled by a base positioned in such a way to provide a small base current. The reported structure uses a GaSb-InAs-AlSb-GaSb heterostructure that has values for beta vastly exceeding that for any tunnel transistor. The devices reported were fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs substrates. The heterostructure device was grown on a thick GaSb layer grown on a superlattice of GaSb-GaAs. The results presented strongly suggest that the Stark effect transistor mechanism as implemented in the GaSb-InAs-AlSb heterojunction system has real promise for providing a device technology for the next generation of ultra-small and ultra-fast transistors. >