Silicon out of the way, you are no longer our top transistor. I am tired of not being able to maintain electrical properties on a small scale. That’s right, we’re leaving you Moving forward and upwards towards something better that can truly grow with us. Simply put, it’s you, not us. Perhaps that valley should be renamed as well.
We’re doing very well with silicon, but companies like TSMC are looking for alternatives. (opens in new tab) For a while, mostly as a way to keep up with Moore’s Law. According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors that can be manufactured on silicon doubles about every two years, and the cost of computers has fallen.
This has been true for a long time, but it is gradually waning. Some Companies Like Nvidia Think It’s Almost Dead (opens in new tab)although AMD says it’s just expensive (opens in new tab) to keep pace.No matter where Moore’s Law is now, it’s set to collapse in the near future (opens in new tab) This is due to the limitations of silicon.
Thankfully Researcher at MIT (opens in new tab) We’ve found what could be our next tranny romance. The good news is that silicon can kind of keep an eye on it. To achieve these tiny sizes, the researchers are using a very thin substance called her 2D material. These delicate sheets of crystal are as thin as a single atom. The idea is to integrate these perfect crystalline structures into today’s industry-standard silicon wafers.
your next machine
best gaming pc (opens in new tab): Professional pre-built machines
best gaming laptop (opens in new tab): The best notebooks for mobile gaming
Until now, the delicacy of these 2D materials has been a major obstacle. The method used usually involves stripping the slither from a large amount of material, which is labor intensive, grows randomly and sometimes leaves imperfections, so finding the right part to strip was necessary.
Recently, a team at MIT found a way to grow crystalline sheets directly onto silicon wafers. This process uses what is called “non-epitaxial single crystal growth” and it seems to work.
So far, the team has successfully grown one of these 2D materials, called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), on silicon wafers, and the crystals are free of major defects. They used this method to create simple but functional transistors and found that 2D materials work well on silicon wafers.
“Until now, there has been no way to create 2D materials in monocrystalline form on silicon wafers, so the whole community has struggled to enable next-generation processors without transferring 2D materials,” he said. Jeehwan Kim, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, explains. At MIT, “We have now completely solved this problem in a way that makes devices smaller than a few nanometers. This will change the Moore’s Law paradigm.”
The big question here, of course, is when this technology will appear, but there’s no word on that. Years of testing and testing will undoubtedly have to be done, but it’s an exciting proposition for the future. Being able to build on existing silicon infrastructure makes this development more likely to find its way into mainstream products than many.Moreover, the future of computers looks crystal (opens in new tab)and what shines more than that?