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Graphene one step closer to replacing silicon

Quantum dots make tiniest transistors
Friday, 18 April 2008, 16:25

BOFFINS AT THE University of Manchester have managed to carve stable transistors just one atom thick by ten atoms wide according to the New Scientist.

The smallest viable transistors, even made from the new material, were until now more than ten times that size. But the new method, which involves chopping the honeycomb-shaped material into "quantun dots" to give it switchable conductivity, has lead to speculation that Moore's Law could soon be shattered.

There are other transistors which can be made as small as the new graphene prototype, but they operate at such high temperatures that they require extreme cooling using volatile gases.

The big news here is that Graphene-based chips would run happily at room temperature.

There is, of course, one tiny caveat. No-one has worked out how to create the devices on an industrial scale, but it's only a matter of time. ยต

L'Inq
New Scientist

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Comments
Graphene CPUs?

Nice, but they'll still run like *%@"! on Windows Vista.

posted by : Andrew Fernie, 18 April 2008 Complain about this comment
I doubt it is hard to industrialise

Quoted from the New Scientist source:
"By contrast, the graphene transistors were made in the same way that silicon devices are, by etching them out of larger pieces of material. "That's their big advantage," he says."

I suppose those quantum dots can be made by etching small dots from graphene.
Graphene isn't exactly hard to hake either

posted by : Roland Wong, 19 April 2008 Complain about this comment
maybe better microrobotics is ansver?

building tiny cpus could be done by microrobotics i bet.

posted by : magnetmannen, 19 April 2008 Complain about this comment
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