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Ultra-Thin Alternative To Silicon

Posted by Soulskill on from the delicious-thin-mint-technology dept.

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."

10 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Four words why this is useless. by the_raptor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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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    1. Re:Four words why this is useless. by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Four words why this is useless. by bertok · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's just under 3 micrograms of arsenic. According to our trusted interwebs source, wikipedia: "The acute minimal lethal dose of arsenic in adults is estimated to be 70 to 200 mg". In other words, each chip contains about 1/25,000th of the lethal dose, in a non-soluble form.

      I'll think you'll be fine.

    3. Re:Four words why this is useless. by BradleyUffner · · Score: 3, Funny

      multiplied by millions or billions of chips. k.

      He's only going to eat one... How many do you think the average person is going to eat?

    4. Re:Four words why this is useless. by Graff · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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...

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      Sapere aude!
  2. Re:But we are already running out of Indium... by aramosfet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  3. Re:Arsenic compounds by dbIII · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd say a lot safer than that green wood you see in playground equipment that has been treated with an arsenic compound to stop termites from eating it (and that stuff has been tested a lot because some kid somewhere is going to chew it). If we are going to be irrationally scared of elements then Teflon would scare the crap out of everyone.
    The answer as usual is how the stuff will behave with any bit of your body that it is likely to come in contact with and that decides what sort of hazard it is. For instance reactive stuff is an obvious hazard and things that will get into your lungs and never get out or break down another. This stuff is going to have very strong covalent bonds that stomach acid isn't going to touch.
    Oddly enough someone at the University I was working at in 1998 made a very thin diode junction of a very similar material using chemical vapour deposition and he wasn't the first to do so. Making a thin layer of the stuff is relatively easy, making an isolated very tiny transistor is hard.

  4. Why thin? by DriedClexler · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought the purpose of silicone was to make the tits look *thicker*?

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    Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
    1. Re:Why thin? by the_other_chewey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      silicon != silicone, dammit.

  5. That's incredibly naiive by tygerstripes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

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