Home > News > Can graphene overtake silicon as the essential ingredient of computer chips?
September 29th, 2007
Can graphene overtake silicon as the essential ingredient of computer chips?
Abstract:
"Graphene has always been before our eyes, but no one ever tried to look," says Andre Geim, a physicist at the University of Manchester in England. A single-atom-thick, chicken wire web of carbon atoms, graphene forms the layers that stack up to make the graphite found in pencil lead and carbon soot.
Though promising, nanotubes have proved devilishly difficult to assemble into circuits. Nanotubes don't readily connect to one another, and attaching them to metal contacts creates spots where electrons tend to scatter, dissipating energy as heat.
Graphene, on the other hand, comes in sheets. It may be possible to etch graphene circuits, just as circuits are now etched into silicon wafers. Forming circuits from one sheet of graphene could be much easier than assembling them from nanotube pieces. "We want to be able to use the essential properties of carbon nanotubes in a material that can be patterned easily," says Walt de Heer of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "It could realize the dream people had of carbon-nanotube electronics."
Source:
sciencenews.org
Related News Press |
Chip Technology
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
Utilizing palladium for addressing contact issues of buried oxide thin film transistors April 5th, 2024
HKUST researchers develop new integration technique for efficient coupling of III-V and silicon February 16th, 2024
Interviews/Book Reviews/Essays/Reports/Podcasts/Journals/White papers/Posters
Simulating magnetization in a Heisenberg quantum spin chain April 5th, 2024
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits: Rice find could hasten development of nonvolatile quantum memory April 5th, 2024
The latest news from around the world, FREE | ||
Premium Products | ||
Only the news you want to read!
Learn More |
||
Full-service, expert consulting
Learn More |
||