Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Build First Molybdenite Microchip
An anonymous reader writes "A Swiss team may have found an alternative to silicon microchips which could result in smaller, more flexible and less energy hungry processors. The Swiss team's chip does not use silicon, but molybdenite (MoS2) a dark-colored, naturally occurring mineral that is able to be used in much thinner layers (paywall)."
This has already been reported: http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/01/31/021258/molybdenite-as-an-alternative-to-silicon
And yes, they're the same. They link to the same Nature Nano article...
I tend to agree, however, keep in mind:
Silicon is abundant. Highly pure silicon is not. You need the latter for microchips.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Wikipedia says Molybdenum is the 54th most abundant element on Earth. This is less abundant than silicon, but nowhere near as rare as other commonly used elements in semiconductors; Indium is far more rare.
Palm trees and 8
Molybdenum is not a rare earth element (lanthanoid), it's a transition metal.
And rare earth elements are not neccessarily rare.
It takes less energy to get moly out of ferrous ore than it does to reduce silicon oxide to silicon. It's also a matter of availability - even though there's more silicon than molybdenum, molybdenum is often much more pure, and found in distinct deposits, and easy to mine, versus silicon being mixed in with all kinds of other crap and distributed wildly all throughout the crust. It's the same thing with rare earths - for example, indium isn't actually rare, it's just that it's EVERYWHERE in very small amounts, instead of convenient little deposits like gold, which is in the crust at about 1/500th the amount.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.