San Francisco, Dec 15 (IANS): Tech majors IBM and Samsung have jointly revealed a major advancement in semiconductor design that can lead to cell phone batteries lasting a week without being charged.

IBM and Samsung have been working to stack up semiconductor transistors vertically to free up more space on the silicon.

The new design, referred to as Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors, or VTFET for short, is a new kind of transistor that can be more densely packed onto a computer chip compared to a FinFET transistor (fin field-effect transistor).

"At these advanced nodes, VTFET could be used to provide two times the performance or up to 85 per cent reduction in energy use compared to the scaled finFET alternative," IBM said in a statement.

The VTFET directs the electrical current vertically, which can help improve the transistor switching speeds and reduce the power needs.

"We believe that the VTFET design represents a huge leap forward toward building next-generation transistors that will enable a trend of smaller, more powerful and energy-efficient devices in the years to come," IBM added.

The companies, however, didn't say when the VTFET technology will arrive as an official chip manufacturing process.