Researchers Build First Molybdenite Microchip

An anonymous reader writes "A Swiss team may have found an alternative to silicon microchips which could result in smaller, more flexible and less energy hungry processors. The Swiss team's chip does not use silicon, but molybdenite (MoS2) a dark-colored, naturally occurring mineral that is able to be used in much thinner layers (paywall)."

Wait, what?

[Wonko the Sane]

On top of that, they also use numerous precious metals including gold, platinum and silicon.

Gold, sure; platinum, no problem; silicon, WTF?

Currently used as a strengthening agent in plastic, molybdenite is abundant in the natural word. Speaking to the BBC, Prof Andras Kis, the director of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) in Lausanne, said that his team’s research could transform the world of computing. ”[Currently] there is something like 19 million metric tonnes around,” Prof Kis said in an interview. ”You can just go on some websites on the internet and buy a 1cm by 1cm crystal for around $100 [£64].”

Abundant as compared to what? Silicon is the third most abundant element on earth and makes up 15% of its mass. Molybdenum is a rare earth element. Also, you can't use the current price of some element based on it not being used to make microprocessors and expect that the cost won't change if you increase the demand for it by many orders of magnitude. There might be good reasons for building microprocessors from molybdenite but replacing scarce silicon with abundant molybdenite is not one of them.

Re:But

[doconnor]

I don't think the cost of the raw material is significant compared to the cost to design and manufacture computer chips.

Researchers build first 10 GB mouse driver

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how hard the real scientists work, it won't take long for the software retards to blame the hardware for being too slow...