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)."

Comments

Re:Make better computers, kill more plants

[Mr Z]

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.

Re:Molykote?

[arivanov]

Probably not pure enough.

You need 99.995+% purity for most semiconductor stuff (99.999+ for CPUs and memory) which can be achieved only via zone smelting. In order to zone smelt the material needs to be able to re-crystalize after being heated locally in the first place. If it does not you can forget using it as a production semiconductor. There are in fact plenty of materials out there which have electron gaps are more "interesting" than silicon. We just have not figured out how to grow to purify them in quantity.

As far as MoS2 is concerned it does not melt and does not recrystalize (it decomposes straight away) so zone smelting is not an option. It decomposes straight away. So frankly I do not see how you can achieve 99.99+ purity to do anything useful with it.