- any two conductive plates close together with an insulator between make a capacitor (1)
- when a capacitor is charged, the energy goes into the electric FIELD
- that's the FIELD of the field effect transistor
- if the field is strong enough, that causes conduction between source and drain (along the "channel")
- the insulator is nanometers thick, so current leaks across it; at that scale, you can detect individual electrons quantum teleporting straight through it.
(1) technically like gravity there is a capacitance between any two objects in the universe, but it's only significant when you have relatively wide and close conductors
The important bits here are:
- any two conductive plates close together with an insulator between make a capacitor (1)
- when a capacitor is charged, the energy goes into the electric FIELD
- that's the FIELD of the field effect transistor
- if the field is strong enough, that causes conduction between source and drain (along the "channel")
- the insulator is nanometers thick, so current leaks across it; at that scale, you can detect individual electrons quantum teleporting straight through it.
(1) technically like gravity there is a capacitance between any two objects in the universe, but it's only significant when you have relatively wide and close conductors