High-Performance Monolithic Graphene Transistors Created 99
MrSeb writes "Hardly a day goes by without a top-level research group announcing some kind of graphene-related breakthrough, but this one's a biggy: Researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany have created high-performance monolithic graphene transistors using a simple lithographic etching process. This could be the missing step that finally paves the way to post-silicon electronics. In theory, according to early demos from the likes of IBM and UCLA, graphene transistors should be capable of switching at speeds between 100GHz and a few terahertz. The problem is, graphene doesn't have a bandgap — it isn't a natural semiconductor, like silicon — and so it is proving very hard to build transistors out of the stuff. Until now! The researchers say that current performance "corresponds well with textbook predictions for the cutoff frequency of a metal-semiconductor field-effect transistor," but they also point out that very simple changes could increase performance 'by a factor of ~30.'"
This could have been first post... (Score:0, Funny)
...if I had a graphene-transistor-based computer.
Re:graphene vs post-silicon (Score:5, Funny)
Just because graphene might became useable does not mean it will replace silicon.
What about when we run out of sand!
Re:BRING BACK FILE CONTROL BLOCKS !! (Score:4, Funny)
I want my CP/M !! I want my "KBs" !! I want my "16 color graphics" !! I want INT 10 !! I want INT 13 !! I wany my TSRs !! I want to be graphene-free !!
I want my graphene in my pencil. I want my pencil in a small leather case along with my sliderule and my log tables.
Re:graphene vs post-silicon (Score:5, Funny)
by this time, we will have run out of carbon too..
There are at least 7 billion sources of carbon at the moment, and that's just the bipedal ones.
Re:graphene vs post-silicon (Score:3, Funny)
Graphene is people!!!!
Re:graphene vs post-silicon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:graphene vs post-silicon (Score:5, Funny)
A mod point
My [Insert cloud provider] for a mod point :b
Wow, you mean... (Score:2, Funny)
Windows will finally run at acceptable speed?
Relation to Roswell UFOs (Score:2, Funny)
For those of us who "want to believe" this creates some dissonance. It has been widely believed by the observant, that following the crash in Roswell, we "invented" t he germanium diode a few years later. The believers associate the two events as causal. That is we reverse-engineered semi-conductor technology from them. This idea has been supported by some people in the "industry" that the crash was not cleaned up (allegedly by high-up grays or even reptilians) so that we could have a chance to boost our technology. Remember at the time we were using vacuum tubes.
I'll accept the germanium diode as a crude version of a silicon diode, but this organic transistor changes everything. The only 'excuses' for aliens to not have been using this technology is that it has disadvantages when used in space or other functional limitations. For those not in the know, a transistor is two diodes attached in opposite orientations. Maybe we can accept silicon transistors as crude copies of organic ones, but the technology in the 50s would not have been up to the task of understanding what is going on. These are way too small. If however I am wrong then the reverse engineering team was really, really clever.