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One-Atom-Thick Silicene Transistors May Lead To Dramatically Faster Chips
Zothecula writes: As recently as 2010, human-made silicene – an atom-thin form of silicon – was purely theoretical. But now the exotic material has been used to make transistors, and researchers have found that silicene's electrical properties lend it extraordinary potential in powering the next generation of computer chips. The new method (abstract) of creating the silicene reduces its exposure to air. "To start, the researchers let a hot vapor of silicon atoms condense onto a crystalline block of silver in a vacuum chamber. They then formed a silicene sheet on a thin layer of silver and added a nanometer-thick layer of alumina on top. Because of these protective layers, the team could safely peel it of its base and transfer it silver-side-up to an oxidized-silicon substrate. They were then able to gently scrape some of the silver to leave behind two islands of metal as electrodes, with a strip of silicene between them."
I'm curious, which one gets fabbed first?
I'd be willing to bet on graphene, since we've had it for years. However, silicene might make it first because it seems like despite the fact that making it is more involved, doing it at industrial scales might be easier.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
they'll be on to the next dope technique.
That is the way it works. R&D is a pipeline:
Basic-Research -> Applied Research -> Product Development -> Manufacturing -> Applications
Silicene is moving from "basic" to "applied" research, and is a long way from actual applications.
But we need to keep feeding the pipeline if we want progress to continue.