Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell
School of Engineering have managed to create a transistor using silicon, the
silicon version of graphene that’s just one atom thick.
Silicene is a volatile material that disintegrates when it
reacts with oxygen in the air. The research team built a sheet of it on a thin
silver surface. It was then capped with aluminum oxide and by gently scraping
away some of the aluminum, they were able to create source and drain contacts
resulting in a field effect transistor.
Hopes were high as electrons flowed through the silicene but
the end results were a bit disappointing. Scientists and researchers had
predicted that electrons would flow through the material much like they do with
graphene but that simply wasn’t the case.
Instead, they observed electron mobility that was about 10
times less than expected. It’s unclear just yet if this is directly related to
the silicene itself or perhaps a fault with their production technique.
There’s still plenty of research that needs to take place
before determining if silicene could overthrown graphene. Even still, it’s a
pretty significant milestone. Assistant professor Deji Akinwande said the major
breakthrough here is the efficient low-temperature manufacturing and
fabrication of silicene devices for the first time.
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One-atom-thick silicone transistor
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Technology news 2015
New discoveries 2015
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Grapheme transistor
Atom thick transistor
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Wooaah!
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