First functional graphene semiconductor paves the path to post-silicon chips — Georgia Tech researchers' material can be used with standard chipmaking methods

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• subignition@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It's still bonded to silicon carbide...

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  • rowinxavier@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, they mean in terms of the limitations if silicone, specifically the gate sizes and other properties. If the whole chip is silicone then you are bound by those limitations, but by changing to carbon things can be smaller and more efficient, allowing better computation with less waste heat.

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    • subignition@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Silicon and silicone are two very different things, just FYI. But that does make sense

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• muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Whats the advantage of post silicone chips?

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  • yuki2501@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    While silicon is abundant on Earth, monocrystalline silicon is incredibly hard to produce. You need to use either chemical purification methods that use silicon compound gases, or to use a slow process that starts with a crystal seed to slowly grow giant rods of pure silicon under a chamber filled with argon gas, and many things can go wrong.

    Semiconductor-grade silicon needs to be 99.999999% pure to guarantee good yields of microchips.

    More on this process here:

    hackaday.com/…/mining-and-refining-pure-silicon-a…

    OTOH, there are more (and cheaper) ways of grafene production:

    en.wikipedia.org/…/Graphene_production_techniques

    (On a related note, you might be interested in the history of the transistor to know the arduous path that humanity took just to get where we are )

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    • barkingspiders@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thanks for the links, that’s really interesting!

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  • Sirico@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Whats the advantage of post silicone chips?

    I’ve not gone into the deep on this yet but what I gather the basic advantages are:

    Greater efficiency so cooler temps lower power consumption Higher frequency (AI,Playing Crysis) An increase in physical properties like flexibility

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    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Can it play Crysis (better) still getting the upvotes.

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  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Graphene transistors have shown to clock in THz and require less energy than silicone counterparts. And you can build every semiconductor and condensator and whatever by merging two graphene or tubes in different ways. And likely more environmentally/climate friendly than using metals.

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    • technohacker@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s by your comment that I’ve now finally realised the C-alternative programming language Carbon was named as a nod to the name and element C

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• ArtificialLink@yall.theatl.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ll wait when i see an actual product. I’ve been hearing about the wonders of graphene for the better part of a decade at least now.

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