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Molybdenite As an Alternative To Silicon
An anonymous reader writes "Molybdenite (MoS2) can be used to make transistors that consume 100,000 times less energy in standby state. This mineral, which is abundant in nature, is often used as an element in steel alloys or as an additive in lubricants. Research carried out in Switzerland at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne's Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) has revealed that is a very effective semiconductor. Molybdenite's 1.8 electron-volt gap is ideal for transistors and gives it an advantage over graphene (which does not have a gap)."
Isn't this just Moly disulphide, the lubricant in Molykote? http://www.dowcorning.com/content/molykote/anniversary.aspx?bhcp=1
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
In the latest technologies a lot of current is wasted to subthreshold conduction . Current that flows then the transistors should be "off".
A material with a higher bandgap 1.8ev to silicons 1.1ev will naturally have less leakage. As it is an exponential thing the leakage should not just be a reduction of 1.1 to 1.8 thing but much more significant.
Molybdenum is a CRITICAL trace element in the development of any food crop we have.
This reeks of the dumbest thing one could do, EVER.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Fuck Yea.
Lets totally get this ball rolling, and replace as many current devices and server farms as possible. So many people advocate cleaner energy solutions, but neglect the possibility of ridiculously increased efficiency. I say, if we can make retarded huge increases in efficiency, we can significantly reduce our power consumption. Plus, can you image a goddamn smart phone with a week long battery life?? Or a laptop that runs for days without needing to recharge? A server farm that could be powered by solar power and a few large battery power storage units? Plus, how much less cooling will be required with such an efficient system. We could all afford to power smart dwellings, and increase our use of technology in our everyday lives.
So like I said: Fuck Yea.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
as if computers don't end up in a landfill after 18 months.
Oh dear. This means they might have to rename Silicon Valley to Molybdenite Valley, but that doesn't sound nearly as nice.
There are plenty of materials out there that make good semiconductors, the question is: can we make them?
Moly disulfide is a material a couple of different graphene groups have been looking at (hey, we know there's an issue with graphene). What this paper really means is that the Ecole group has figured out how to *make* MoS2 better than other people, and that's really the hard part. Of course, they're still making devices using scotch tape exfoliation...
It's really hard to mass produce 2D materials.
Like I could resist this! What do YOU want from life?
a king-size Titanic unsinkable Molly Brown waterbed with polybendum,
a foolproof plan and an airtight alibi,
real simulated Indian jewelry,
a Gucci shoetree,
a year's supply of antibiotics,
a Las Vegas wedding,
a Mexican divorce,
a solid gold Kama Sutra coffee pot,
or a baby's arm holding an apple?
This mineral, which is abundant in nature, is often used as an element in steel alloys or as an additive in lubricants. That is a joke, isn't it? Or is it just /.?
From Wikipedia:
Molybdenum is the 54th most abundant element in the Earth's crust and the 25th most abundant element in the oceans, with an average of 10 parts per billion; it is the 42nd most abundant element in the Universe.
That is not abundant that is pretty rare. Considering 35% of the planet is silicon ... or is it more?
Regards,
Angel
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"...Molybdenite's 1.8 electron-volt gap is ideal for transistors and gives it an advantage over graphene (which does not have a gap)..."
With Graphene, I can scribble it on Scotch Tape and get a Nobel Prize; can I do that with Molybdenite?
It's not possible to reduce anything by more than 1X - because at that point you are left with NOTHING
- You can reduce power consumption to 1/100,000 of the previous consumption, but not reduce it by 100,000 x.
- this is just a quirk of mathematics that many people either don't realize, or don't understand.
...for recommending the movie "The Brothers O'Toole", look it up.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
With all of these other materials available for computer circuitry , are their computers manufactured with materials that are far more efficient but cost more (probably enormously more) to produce that are only available to a select few ?
Google just announced their new browser update, "Chrome Moly".
let me know when you have I-V curves for a moly disulpide FET. Both p and n types please.
I learned many moons ago, that one of the most important things about Si is the fact that it's so easy to grow an oxide. It's EXTREMELY useful when processing integrated circuits. Otherwise everything electronic would use III-V's.
Any new material which aims to replace Si is going to need an equivalent process capability.
Personally I'm hoping for a breakthrough in organic semiconductors. I want to be able to screen print transistors at home.
Absolute statements are never true
Molly's Revenge are one of the local Irish bands seen here in the Bay Area. (Apparently they were a follow-on to an earlier band called Dance Around Molly, but with a name like "Molly's Revenge" they eventually had to wrote a song involving someone named Molly and some revenge...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well the Einstein picture looks fairly accurate... like it's been dead for years! Why do I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get more comments? Why does this version of slashdot exist?
cant wait to upgrade my laptop
and then I thought of something else that could be upgraded
I had hope that this new molymer(?) might need to be in high demand to drive mass production and reduce prices.
using this alternative to silicone for paired spherical enhancements.
a micro chip would use a very small amount compared to these spheres of 200-500ml each
then i came across this sentence
"One of molybdenite's advantages is that it is less voluminous than silicon, which is a three-dimensional material."
I think this would be a disadvantage, especially with all the 3D monitors.
this is not intended to be a replacement for silicon but rather a supplementary component for transistors. check out the illustration and notice the caption, "This is a digital model showing how molybdenite can be integrated into a transistor."
so not to worry, everyone who has invested their life savings in sand is perfectly safe.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
... but it's no dolomite, baby!
Leakage current has been the dominant issue since the days of the P4 and the first nVidia vacuum cleaner. As the devices have gotten smaller, the leakage has gone up significantly. To combat this, they've stopped increasing clock speed and started to use a lot of clock-gating and power gating where parts of the chip are inactive or even turned off. They are at the point where a higher gate voltage to turn on should not offset the reduced power dissipation due to leakage current.
You know...deserts have sand, too.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
That's a horrid lead-in that tells us exactly nothing. "Less energy than" what?
Some of the possibilities:
Molybdenite (MoS2) can be used to make transistors that consume 100,000 times less energy in standby state than when they are not in standby state.
Molybdenite (MoS2) can be used to make transistors that consume 100,000 times less energy in standby state than silicon-based transistors do in standby state.
Molybdenite (MoS2) can be used to make transistors that consume 100,000 times less energy in standby state than Cowboy Neal does to zip up his pants.
Seriously, don't make us guess what you mean.
AKA "Molly be damned"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I came thinking it was a safer more natural feeling replacement for breast implants and I'm leaving disappointed.
Until humans find a use for it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
There are many materials that are in some way better than silicon.
And some of these are used in special purpose devices, why is silicon still so great?
Part of it is that it's been used for so long and is studied so well that every feature a designer wants is readily available, be it purity, high-k or low-k, multiple doped layers, cheap oxide layers, metal layers, relatively easy etching, polysilicon layers, etc.
Consumer electronics require short cycles and therefore available technology.
What is the fundamental reason for silicon dominance? Ask an expert, not /.
IIRC it used to be purity and close CTE for Si and SiO2, primary semiconductor and insulator. Nowadays I'm not so sure.
silicon is a 3-layer material, whereas molybdenite is monolayer
Huh? A MOS transistor is three-layer: Metal, Oxide, Semiconductor, no matter what is the semiconductor.
You will probably never see this in practice in any large scale semiconductors because of two reasons: 1. There is already an established process and infrastructure to refine silicon. 2. Mo costs more due to rarity and does not have a well established industrial process to refine it. As it stands, it is incredibly expensive and requires large amounts of energy to refine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon#Purification Mo being rarer to begin with will have a higher material cost, and will also probably be that much more difficult to refine. I am not sure what processes there are to distill/refine Mo into the superpure state needed for semiconductors, but I cannot imagine that there are established processes that can handle the worldwide demand for semiconductors.
To all those nay-sayers: Mo has atomic number 42. Clearly, using this element is the answer.
What? Am I the only one wondering how this stuff would feel under skin?