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."

Comments

this vs graphene.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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.

Re:this vs graphene.

[ShanghaiBill]

I'm curious, which one gets fabbed first?

Silicene has a tunable band gap. That makes it more useful for transistors. But, unlike graphene, it will spontaneously oxidize. So there are some big problems to iron out with both graphene and silicene. This research is mainly about dealing with the oxidation problem. If we can solve that, then silicene will likely "win" the race to fabrication.

Re:this vs graphene.

[infogulch]

The problem is graphene has no band-gap, so it's pretty useless as a transistor (unless it's heavily doped I suppose). That's not to say it can't be doped, or that there aren't any uses for graphene other than transistors.

Re:this vs graphene.

[pla]

Graphene has the unfortunate property that transistors using it don't actually have an "off" mode - Just a "low" and "high". So although it might give us crazy-fast switching times, it will leak current worse than an XFinity modem. But hey, we all miss the good ol' days of using our P4 gaming rigs as space heaters, right?

Silicene, by comparison, does have a tunable band-gap, meaning that it should get around that limitation of graphene.

Re:this vs graphene.

[ArcadeMan]

But with the high cost of drugs, won't that make it even more expensive?

Re:By the time this gets fabbed...

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Mechanical stability?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I don't have any kind of physics background, so maybe someone can explain this to me.

If you have a single-atom-thick layer of some material, how much of a bump can it withstand before the sheet gets ripped apart? I would imagine even a small vibration of the material, such as dropping the overall package on a desk, would ruin it.

Re:Mechanical stability?

[kesuki]

as i understand the ceramic or silver substrate will bond it and make it stable enough for use as a microchip.

Very very small rolling pins?

[CODiNE]

How does one get the initial flat surface to deposit things on?

Re:DUH

[ArcadeMan]

You just confessed to having a small dick and suffering from premature ejaculation. Congratulations!