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."

Comments

Re:Four words why this is useless.

[Graff]

multiplied by millions or billions of chips. k.

Spread out over 149 million square kilometers. At a billion chips that comes out to be less than 7 chips per square kilometer. As someone else pointed out, it's about 3 micrograms of arsenic per chip for a total of about 20 micrograms per square kilometer.

Yes, there can be higher concentrations in places like trash dumps but it's still going to take a gigantic amount of these chips in one spot before anyone would have any reasonable concerns about the environmental impact due to the arsenic levels.

Somehow I think we'll be just fine...