A way to extend Moore’s law?
US and French researchers are exploring thin layers of graphite, graphene, as a semiconductor. Consisting of less than 10 layers of graphite, and with a similar chicken wire structure to an unrolled carbon nanotube, the teams hope to use the material for electronic systems that manipulate electrons as waves rather than particles.
“We expect to make devices of a kind that don’t really have an analogue in silicon-based electronics, so this is an entirely different way of looking at electronics,” said Professor Walt de Heer from Georgia Tech’s school of physics.
What I love about enabling technology like this is all the interesting new devices that will be developed from it.
The key to properties of graphene circuitry is the width of the ribbons, which confine the electrons in a quantum effect similar to that seen in carbon nanotubes. The width of the ribbon controls the material’s band-gap. Feature sizes down to 80nm have been created and the teams are working towards 10nm.
The material is produced by baking silicon carbide wafers to drive the silicon off, and Georgia claims 25,000cm2/Vs mobility, compared with 1,500 for doped silicon.
That made my head spin. WOW !!! 25,000cm2/Vs mobility, compared with 1,500 for doped silicon. I need another pill.
IF the method/material proves to be feasible for mass production while still maintaining 25,000cm2/Vs, they could only extend Moore’s law by another 3 intervals. Amazing, but the “wall” is still close at hand.
A few years loitering at the “wall” could be a positive thing. Core technologies could stabilize and programmers could get it right and keep it right, eliminating version after version of buggy operating systems and applications.