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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."
I hate it when people post links to articles which require me to login or subscribe to read. Could you atleast tell me whats the "single material" he's talking about?
We're talking about a 10nm layer across the surface of a chip - that's about a square centimeter. If anyone seriously complains about 50% of this being Arsenic, I would happily scrape it off and eat it in front of them. I don't think it would be a quantity large enough for the human eye to see.
silicon != silicone, dammit.
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