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October 21, 2014, 06:01:33 PM |
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I read this in an IPC technology briefing:
Just as metals may soon be replaced in many products by the new compounds, it also appears that the days of copper circuits in electronic devices are numbered.
As new generations of computer chips continue to shrink in size, so do the copper pathways that transport electricity and information around the labyrinth of transistors and components. When these pathways grow smaller, they become less efficient, consume more power, and are more prone to permanent failure.
It is generally accepted that a replacement for traditional copper must be discovered and perfected in the next five to 10 years in order to perpetuate Moore's Law, the defining industry paradigm which states that "the number of transistors on a computer chip, and thus the chip's speed, should double every 18 to 24 months."
To overcome this hurdle, industry and academia are vigorously researching new candidates to succeed traditional copper as the material of choice for interconnects on computer chips. One promising candidate is graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged like a nanoscale chicken wire fence.
Prized by researchers for its unique properties, graphene is essentially a single layer of the graphite found commonly in our pencils or the charcoal we burn in our barbeque grills.
A new study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in conjunction with Intel was recently published in the journal ACSNano. The Rensselaer researchers discovered they could enhance the ability of graphene to transmit electricity by stacking several thin graphene ribbons on top of one another. This brings the industry closer to designating graphene as the "heir apparent" to copper.
Single layers of graphene nanoribbons are not suitable for interconnects because they exhibit a "band gap," which is an energy gap between the valence and conduction bands, making them ineffective in this role.
The new study shows that stacking the graphene nanoribbons on top of each other significantly shrinks this band gap. Specifically, the optimal thickness is a stack of four to six layers of graphene; stacking more layers doesn't reduce the band gap any further.
The goal is to one day manufacture microprocessors with both the interconnects and the transistors made entirely out of graphene. This game-changing vision, called "monolithic integration," is likely still any years into the future.
If realized, it will certainly revolutionize the way computers and electronics are designed and manufactured.
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