Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Atom-thick material runs rings around silicon - tech - 17 April 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Atom-thick material runs rings around silicon - tech - 17 April 2008 - New Scientist Tech:
"A leading contender to replace silicon as the basis for computing has made another step forward.

Transistors one atom thick and ten atoms wide have been made by UK researchers. They were carved from graphene, predicted by some to one day oust silicon as the basis of future computing.

For 40 years computing has been dominated by a rule of thumb named Moore's law, which predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every two years.

Yet silicon, the material that has so far been used to keep up with Moore's law cannot form stable structures below 10 nanometres in size. And today's newest chips already have features just 45 nm across. The hunt is on for a replacement for silicon. ..."
Yesterday's blog entry was addressed by New Scientist three months ago with this story on the use of graphene, a flat sheet of carbon, one atom thick, with the atoms arranged in a honeycomb. While there has been success in the laboratory, it remains impractical to mass-produce with graphene.

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