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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.
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!
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.
And actually, it appears that MoS2 over a silicon substrate is exactly what they're proposing. I knew I should have looked at the blowup first.
Program Intellivision!
in reality, you will just get more features out of the same die consuming the same amount of power than today. We did great with small CPU, the software we run on them just became full of bloat (not to speak about all the HD crap). That said, Intel's business is to sell you a new CPU every few years, not make it last 15 years.
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.
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?
You have misunderstood the article. It clearly says molybdenite transistors consume 100.000 times less energy than silicon ones in STANDBY. Not when operational. Sure, it would increase efficiency of mobile devices where you turn unneeded transistors off to save energy, but it would do nothing for when the system is operational and in use. Thus your idea of a server farm being solar powered is completely without basis.
Molybdenite's strength is in mobile applications: when the device is in standby mode it consumes a lot less energy than traditional silicon-based ones. But it has another strength here: silicon is a 3-layer material, whereas molybdenite is monolayer. This means that you can make smaller chips, or cram more stuff in a chip of the same size.
Google just announced their new browser update, "Chrome Moly".
It is not a quirk of mathematics. It is a quirk of language.
While it can be parsed the way you say, most would parse it to mean "1/100000 of previous consumption".
It might not be the "right" way, but it is the way most people read it.
So on one hand what you state is correct from a mathematical standpoint but on the other hand irrelevant. :p
It is technically incorrect but the phrase "xxx times less" has become the way people express that something is 1/xxx of what it used to be.
You can yell at people until you're blue in the face but it is pointless to try to change the language back to what it used to be
Um, okay. You can pass on my TED talks. Otherwise, the point stands.
Molybdenum is generally gathered as a byproduct of other mining operations. The "free" molybdenum in soil that plants uses is utterly unaffected when you tear open a mountain to get at it. The original point of "OMG BUT PLANTS USE IT!" was dumb and reactionary. Hell, just re-read the original post if you are in doubt. This is like if someone declared that they found a novel use for nitrogen and someone else freaked out be cause OMFG nitrogen is critical for all life!!!11!!
There are actual legitimate road blocks to using molybdenum in place of silicon. OMFG the plants!11!!! isn't one of them.
You're doing some freaky ass computing if all the transistors in your CPU are active at the same time.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
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
40 kW average? Home? That would be 83 amp service @480V, for a single computer. How many of these supercomputers do you have?
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