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Scientists Craft Seamless 2D Semiconductor Junctions
vinces99 (2792707) writes Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick. The University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that two of these single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction. This result could be the basis for next-generation flexible and transparent computing, better light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and solar technologies.
"Heterojunctions are fundamental elements of electronic and photonic devices," said senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering and of physics. "Our experimental demonstration of such junctions between two-dimensional materials should enable new kinds of transistors, LEDs, nanolasers, and solar cells to be developed for highly integrated electronic and optical circuits within a single atomic plane."
"Heterojunctions are fundamental elements of electronic and photonic devices," said senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering and of physics. "Our experimental demonstration of such junctions between two-dimensional materials should enable new kinds of transistors, LEDs, nanolasers, and solar cells to be developed for highly integrated electronic and optical circuits within a single atomic plane."
There's really not anything out there to handle mass production at this scale, but that's the best part; once you show that it can be done at a small scale, tons of resources come pouring in and generally they figure it out. The chip and solar technology right now is geared for a completely different type of production, so even this technology is amazing, it's got a lot of inertia to fight and would probably be 'born' at a startup, after a lot of failures.
X
Nope. It's common knowledge that 2D fab (which uses little circles as opposed to spherical atoms) is much cheaper than 3D. It just hasn't gained market visibility yet, since almost everything has always used 3D based techniques.
Though the insurance rates are higher because of what the companies describe as "very sharp edges."
For sufficiently small values of 3 dimensions, it effectively becomes 2 dimensions. ;-)
So, when you draw a line on paper, it's a line on a plane, even though the ink has some depth to it and the paper has a surface which isn't completely flat under a microscope.
Or, something like that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, apparently they've defined a plane to be 3 atoms thick, and have grossly understimated the collective anal retentiveness of the people reading the article.
Dude, seriously, it's a dumbed down metaphor written for a press release.
From the parts of the paper which are available without subscription:
I'm quite sure they're not idiots who really think this is a freakin' 2D plane.
TFA isn't the actual scientific paper, it's the press release intended for the public.
Now, unclench a little, you're gonna hurt yourself. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"Nope. It's common knowledge that 2D fab (which uses little circles as opposed to spherical atoms) is much cheaper than 3D."
I wouldn't trust anything made on circular-atom technology these days. The only factories that still make the little electron-dots for them are all in dodgy neighborhoods in China, and half the time once delivered they turn out to just be a few photons glued together and painted black...
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Which is why I mentioned your pedantry.
In fact, since it's drawn with electrons, it's got depth too. Actually, since it's drawn as pixels on your screen, which by now are probably discrete LED components, it's much more than that.
It's a signal which causes a series of diodes to emit a color which your eyes perceive as a straight black line -- in reality, it's none of those things either.
Look, you can be as pedantic, reductionist, and anal retentive about this as you like .. it's not contributing anything to this.
For purpose of explaining this and discussing it, they defined a plane in terms of this sheet of atoms with this particular layout.
That's it. There's no mathematical chicanery going on, and everybody knows it's not, strictly speaking, either a plane or a 2D structure. But it's got some characteristics of a plane, and, for purposes of discussion, is being treated as a 2D structure.
Because, if they had to say this 3-atom thick sheet of interlocking atoms which demonstrates some characteristics of planarity, and allow us to connect them together while maintaining the same type of planarity it would get awfully tedious.
In reality, it's probably not much different than LEGO.
Seriously, get over it. It's almost impossible to discuss this kind of thing without it turning into a tongue twister unless you come up with some form of metaphor.
The rest of this ... it's purely bullshit and pedantry by anal retentive people who need to demonstrate they remember something from math class.
Yes, excellent, from a mathematical perspective it's not 2D. But, for purposes of discussion of these material properties, they're calling it a plane.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.