Slashdot Mirror
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)."
I'll keep that in mind before I strip mine any farms for molybdenum. Otherwise, I am pretty sure the plants inside of the middle of a mountain are not going to mind.
Huh? Just like all the steel we produce somehow reduces the amount of iron plants and animals can make use of? Are you suggesting that a significant fraction of mined molybdenite goes to fertilizer manufacture?
Molybdenum may not be as abundant as silicon, but it's still fairly abundant. (54th most abundant in the crust and 25th most abundant in sea water, says Wikipedia.) And given its fairly high cost, I imagine any increased demand will be offset by its cost. This would limit molybdenum to niche applications where controlling leakage is a must. I imagine MoS2 based semiconductors would only be cost effective if they can figure out how to use as little of it as possible, perhaps with MoS2 over some other substrate.
I can think of much stupider things that we could do (and in fact are doing already), such as bottling water, or hyperfocusing food production on corn and subsidizing large quantities of corn-based ethanol production.
Program Intellivision!
It's pretty convenient that the US also happens to be the world's largest producer of the stuff too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2005molybdenum_(mined).PNG
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
You don't need 10kg of the stuff to make a semiconductor device. Compare it to gold: we produce about 30x more Mo, and you certainly have a few grams of gold somewhere in your house. Anyway my guess is that it might be laid down in layers on top of an insulating substrate (and the substrate doesn't have to be MoS2). So the quantities required are not out of line with production, despite the fact that it is relatively rare in the universe.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.