14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since graphene was first discovered in 2004, the scientific community has been buzzing with excitement as to the wide array of possibilities that the new, one-atom-thick material opened. One of the most hyped subjects was that of using the exotic material as a basis for a new generation of computer processors that would be smaller, faster, and more capable than existing, silicon-based ones. Now, a collaboration among engineers from the Stanford University (SU), the University of Florida (UF), and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LVNL) has managed to bring that objective one step closer, when they have created one of two basic types of semiconductors, made from graphene.
Devising semiconductors at an atomic scale is not an easy task, as any of the team members would gladly tell you. But they hold the promise of being the building block of future computer processors, able to hold many times more memory than existing ones do. Eight of the researchers involved in the new breakthrough have co-authored a study detailing the finds, which appears in today's (May 8th) issue of the journal Science.
“There are still enormous challenges to really put it into products, but I think this really could play an important role,” UF Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Jing Guo, who has been one of the two Florida-based study co-authors, explained. He added that the “n-type” transistor the team created was entirely made up of nanoribbons, which in turn were entirely made up of graphene. The latter has a honeycomb-like structure, which means that a large portion of graphene looks like an array of interconnected hexagons.
For processors based on this technology to become possible, experts had only two things to do, namely to build both “p-type” and “n-type” transistors. But the “p” kind had already been constructed a while back, so the “n-type” was all that remained to be achieved. With the team's breakthrough, the way for building the processors now lays open for experts around the world. “This work is essentially finding a new way to modify a graphene nanoribbon to make it able to conduct electrons. This addresses a very fundamental requirement for graphene to be useful in the production of electronics,” Guo said.
“This work is just a beginning. It suggests that graphene chemistry and chemistry at the edges are rich areas to explore for both fundamental and practical reasons for this material,” Hongjie Dai, one of the five Stanford researchers who have co-authored the Science paper, concluded.