When we all had imagined that the Moore's law will hold good for more than 40 odd years, Silicon,the king of semiconductor materials just got a substitute. The industry which is gaining great impetus and leverage over the growth of Si market, is experimenting for the faster semiconductor. Which, in turn, gives faster speed to the digital circuitry. The fact lies that the major masses of the world(i.e. INDIANS) just discovered the computer as a essential commodity a few years ago. The world digital industry is trying to fulfill the dream of the faster machine by giving in to different Processors and RAM's(an average Indian can relate speed of the computer to only these two things), industry modified silicon substrates to give us a better machine. Now, comes in the hero of the evening, Graphene; Graphene is the atomic particulate which can be obtained graphite(the pencil lead). The smudge of the pencil, is that of graphene. It has a one atom thick crystal with great electric properties. Experiment conducted in Maryland University state that when at room temperature, electrons travel at 200,000cm/sec in 1V/cm electric field. This is 100 times faster than the normal movement of electron in Si, hence a faster material for conduction. The smallest transistor was made from graphene which was to be 1 atom thick and 10 to 50 atoms wide. It is not a natural choice of transistor material as it does not have a electric bandgap i.e. the graphene transistor is hard to turn off. Andre Geim & Kostya Novoselov of the Manchester University overcame the obstacles by etching off some of the Graphene to create narrow constrictions which provided the bandgap.
The speed of electron transfer due to graphene has got the world excited & its research is getting funded from right across Europe to USA. Graphene can relatively reduce the chip size and reduce the magnanimity of heavy RF circuits. Its high conductance can be used to pack in more power in batteries and to make more sensitive sensors. An expert in 2D dynamics of an electron from Harvard University has said that graphene may not be able to replace Si completely but would surely take a large chunk of its industry for its own. he further says that due to graphene all the rules about how the electron behaves are changed.
The topic is hot to handle but too precious to be missed hence please post comments if you all find some interesting reports in this field. Very fast it is but is it reliable is the question. Small it is to the big daddy Silicon but David did beat Goliath, didn't he?
More on topic at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
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3 comments:
Also a substitute for Indium
Researchers led by Dr Kostya Novoselov from The School of Physics and Astronomy and The School of Computer Science, have said that graphene could be used as a transparent conductive coating for electro-optical devices and that its high transparency and low resistivity make it ideal for electrodes in liquid crystal devices."Graphene is only one atom thick, optically transparent, chemically inert, and an excellent conductor
Transparent conducting films are an es
sential part of many gadgets including common liquid crystal displays (LCDs) for computers, TVs and mobile phones. The underlying technology uses thin metal-oxide films based on indium. But indium is becoming an increasingly expensive commodity and, moreover, its supply is expected to be exhausted within just 10 years," said Prof Geim.
Scientists have an urgent task on their hands to find new types of conductive transparent films." Now, researchers have demonstrated that highly transparent and highly conductive ultra-thin films can be produced cheaply by ‘dissolving' chunks of graphite into graphene and then spraying the suspension onto a glass surface. The resulting graphene-based films can be used in LCDs.
interesting thought.
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