Scientists have created the world's smallest transistor, the transistor is only one atom thick and less than fifty atoms wide. Transistors this small could potentially revolutionise computer chip technology, making chips a hell lot faster and smaller than today's silicon-based technology.

Researchers at the University of Manchester made the transistor out of the world's thinnest material, Graphene.

Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon that is extremely stable, strong and flexible, and has high electrical conductivity with almost no resistance, making it perfect for electronics. Due to its size and low resistance, electrons can travel along the sheet in a manner that mimics the speed of light.

Graphene was discovered in 2004 by the University of Manchester team, which made a cruder version of the transistor at the time. But they have now perfected their process to make a smaller and more stabile transistor.

But will this kind of transistor break Moore's Law, is it possible to make transistors on a sub-atomic level within a few years?

Moore's Law, in its most popular formulation, describes the advancing ability of manufacturers to squeeze more components such as transistors onto a circuit, and therefore more raw computing power, at a rate that doubles about every two years.

Moore's Law will probably hold a few more years, but as miniaturization is reaching its limits, it can't hold forever.

To illustrate how thin one layer of Graphene is, you'll need to stack 200.000 layers of Graphene on top of each other to match the thickness of a human hair. The new transistor created by Prof. Andre Geim and his team is just a few billionths of a metre.

He said entire circuits could eventually be cut from a single sheet of Graphene, but does not believe the technology will be broadly available commercially before 2025.

Last fall, Geim was awarded the 2007 Mott Medal and Prize by England's Institute of Physics for leading the researchers whose discovery of Graphene led to a new category of material known as two-dimensional atomic crystals.