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Ultra-Thin Alternative To Silicon
An anonymous reader writes "There's good news in the search for the next generation of semiconductors. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have successfully integrated ultra-thin layers of the semiconductor indium arsenide onto a silicon substrate to create a nanoscale transistor with excellent electronic properties (abstract). A member of the III–V family of semiconductors, indium arsenide offers several advantages as an alternative to silicon, including superior electron mobility and velocity, which makes it an outstanding candidate for future high-speed, low-power electronic devices."
indium arsenide offers several advantages as an alternative to silicon, including superior electron mobility and velocity"
Mr. Executive: Whats the cost?
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Coming soon: indium arsenide condoms!
captcha: seeding
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I know there is already arsenic compounds in other devices (Some LED colours, GaAs based FETs, etc)
LED's aren't such an issue, because even when you kill them they usually stay contained within their epoxy. IC's and transistors on the other hand like to explode violently on occasion.
Just curious about the health hazards, if any apply. I've been known to kill some silicon on occasion ;-)
Sounds interesting anyway.
Much easy to find than that pesky sand
Yay me!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827831.000-ten-years-to-save-the-touchscreen.html
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." - Zapp Brannigan
Restriction of Hazardous Substances.
There are already a bunch of non-substitutable components that can't be used because of RoHS. Adding arsenic to make faster electronics is just not going to fly (it doesn't matter if current methods are just as toxic, everyone knows about Arsenic and RoHS is half PR). Researchers should be concentrating on making electronics less toxic so we don't keep poisoning African and Asian kids (working for electronics "recyclers") with last years iPhones.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I thought the purpose of silicone was to make the tits look *thicker*?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Yes, but will it blend?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This day has been a long time in coming. I'd like to congratulate everyone involved. Younger folks may not realize how important this news is. Thanks to this we FINALLY have a slashdot headline where "Natalie Portman" is actually on topic.
This is all good when it comes to semiconductors, but the important question is what kind of a difference we can now expect to see in implants compared to the ones offered today?
I thought this possible a year or so ago while goofing off with diodes, but imagined the method needed to prevent leakage from the alloy would be too difficult to implement on a small scale.
Glad to see I could be wrong. Science never ceases to amaze and educate me every single day.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Maybe a really dumb question. Why don't they use normal conductors? Wouldn't something that conducts electricity more efficiently generate much less heat and allow for higher clock cycles?
I don't see the point of this when comparing the potential of Graphene based processors. These things, when (not if) they become reality, will have the same impact that perfecting Fusion power will. There's just no reason to spend the time trying to eek out a few more percent when the second that we manage to get the better technology to work, we'll no longer need anything else.
If this process is simpler and quicker to reach the fabs, and produces a notable performance increase, then it's worth it to develop. Someone will want to buy it, and that means someone will want to develop it.
Just to hammer it home: why do you bother, ever, to upgrade your hardware, knowing it'll one day be obsolete?
Meta will eat itself
This is interesting from a technical perspective, but I doubt that it will catch on commercially. First, Silicon is just too cheap, and the manufacturing has been refined for decades. Convincing manufacturers to switch to another matierial is going to be an uphill battle, at best. Second, Silicon offers something that few other semiconductor processes have -- relatively close electron and hole mobilities (usually around a factor of 2). Even though it's not spectacular, the similar mobilities make the construction of both N-type and P-type transistors practical, enabling CMOS architecture. Try building a computer with only N-type devices; it's been done, but ain't too efficient.
Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Indium Phosphide (InP), also both III-V semiconductors, among many others, have been around a long time and certainly have their niche markets. Their electron mobilities are orders of magnitude higher than Silicon and they have other nice benefits over Silicon (high breakdown, semi-insulating substrate, etc); still, they just can't compete in the commercial market.
Arsenic is already commonly used in the silicon processes for doping purposes, so I don't think those new chips would be banned for containing it.
I read the other day that indium may well become hard to come by in the not too distant future... indium tin oxide is heavily used in the now trendy touch screen displays, so will this technology become mainstream before the indium reserves run dry???
John_Chalisque
How come there's never a breakthrough in software? Why is it always on the hardware guys to improve things?
If it's going to be economically viable to extract, then it needs to have a high concentration somewhere. If an element is uniformly distributed in the earth's crust, then unless it's _very_ abundant, it's not going to be economically viable to extract (at .25ppm, Indium doesn't fit that bill).
So, while it may be more abundant than silver, it isn't often found in as high concentrations, so some people believe that we'll soon run out of economically viable sources -- one estimate puts that amount at 6,000 tons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium#Occurrence_and_consumption
Silicon only become the predominate material in the 1970s when it became insanely cheap to manufacture integrated circuits with it. Before then there was germanium, gallium, arsium, etc. Diamond, graphene,indium, and other materials make pretty good transistors. But can you put a billion of them in a couple square centimeters at a millionth of a cent per transistor?