Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Carbon microchips?

Carbon to build microchips?


Princeton University researchers have a concept that might push the semi-conductor industry further in the race to speed and miniaturization: According to them, building transistors out of graphene (layers of graphite), would allow faster switching speeds, which would basically mean higher frequencies (Ghz).

The “why it is possible” is not really explained in the source article, but one of the researcher believes that the technology could be adapted to manufacture chips in “a few years”.

That sounds very optimistic to say the least. First, they need to create wafers that are 200mm big, secondly, the surface has to be near perfect, or the number of rejects will skyrocket. And that’s just the building blocks, more needs to happen before engineers can design for a new process.

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[Source: Ubergizmo]