Rare element to provide better material for high-speed electronics

[speedbeastxx]

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Purdue researchers have discovered a new two-dimensional material, derived from the rare element tellurium, to make transistors that carry a current better throughout a computer chip.

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The discovery adds to a list of extremely thin, two-dimensional materials that engineers have tried to use for improving the operation speed of a chip's transistors, which then allows information to be processed faster in electronic devices, such as phones and computers, and defense technologies like infrared sensors.

 

Other two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, black phosphorus and silicene, have lacked either stability at room temperature or the feasible production approaches required to nanomanufacture effective transistors for higher speed devices.

 

"All transistors need to send a large current, which translates to high-speed electronics," said Peide Ye, Purdue's Richard J. and Mary Jo Schwartz Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "One-dimensional wires that currently make up transistors have very small cross sections. But a two-dimensional material, acting like a sheet, can send a current over a wider surface area."

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Tellurene, a two-dimensional film researchers found in the element tellurium, achieves a stable, sheet-like transistor structure with faster-moving "carriers" -- meaning electrons and the holes they leave in their place. 

 

This is great news as chips get smaller an smaller on the current format of One-dimensional wires. It is very hard to shrink silicon, so this material might make it easier to do so and increase performance substantially at the same time. 

 

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Despite tellurium's rarity, the pros of tellurene would make transistors made from two-dimensional materials easier to produce on a larger scale. The researchers detail their findings in Nature Electronics.

"Even though tellurium is not abundant on the Earth's crust, we only need a little bit to be synthesized through a solution method. And within the same batch, we have a very high production yield of two-dimensional tellurene materials," said Wenzhuo Wu, assistant professor in Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering. "You simply scale up the container that holds the solution, so productivity is high."

This could possibly mean it will be cheaper to make chips.

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Since electronics are typically in use at room temperature, naturally stable tellurene transistors at this temperature are more practical and cost-effective than other two-dimensional materials that have required a vacuum chamber or low operation temperature to achieve similar stability and performance.

 

The larger crystal flakes of tellurene also mean less barriers between flakes to electron movement -- an issue with the more numerous, smaller flakes of other two-dimensional materials.

"High carrier mobility at room temperature means more practical applications," Ye said. Faster-moving electrons and holes then lead to higher currents across a chip.

The researchers anticipate that because tellurene can grow on its own without the help of any other substance, the material could possibly find use in other applications beyond computer chip transistors, such as flexible printed devices that convert mechanical vibrations or heat to electricity.

This is good as it will make compatibility with current computer hardware, which is good compared to other two-dimensional materials. 

I like how this is going to be the future of the computer chip. This is very interesting in my opinion. What do you think?

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524141529.htm

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-018-0058-4

[Cole5]

Im dead beat tired...But what is a 2 dimensional  material?

[TopHatProductions115]

Sounds as if we may be on the cusp of a  technological revolution here  

[speedbeastxx]

1 minute ago, Cole5 said:

Im dead beat tired...But what is a 2 dimensional  material?

looking it over i am still not 100% sure, so I dont want to tell you the wrong answer.

[speedbeastxx]

1 minute ago, TopHatProductions115 said:

Sounds as if we may be on the cusp of a  technological revolution here  

most definitely.

[leadeater]

Lets just hope something actually eventuates from this, unlike the mentioned next big things that were never.

[Cole5]

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Lets just hope something actually eventuates from this, unlike the mentioned next big things that were never.

Well ether these folks will turn up dead in a few months and this stuff becomes mainstream in 20 years, Or they become dead and it goes the way of that Starlite

Or they become the richest folks on earth

[DocSwag]

1 hour ago, Cole5 said:

Im dead beat tired...But what is a 2 dimensional  material?

I'm gonna guess it's like graphene, where it's only 1 atom thick. So like a 1 atom thick sheet of some material.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, DocSwag said:

I'm gonna guess it's like graphene, where it's only 1 atom thick. So like a 1 atom thick sheet of some material.

That's my understanding too.  Because the sheet is only one atom thick it's depth cannot be used for anything. leaving only it's width and length usable.

 

happy to be corrected if their is a quantum nut on the forum.

[Sauron]

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Rare element

=virtually useless for consumer products. One of the benefits of using silicon is that it is (or was) extremely common. This won't cut it for mass production.

[laminutederire]

31 minutes ago, Sauron said:

=virtually useless for consumer products. One of the benefits of using silicon is that it is (or was) extremely common. This won't cut it for mass production.

Graphene looked promising on that front to be honest. Since... Well.. it's quite abundant

[Sauron]

Just now, laminutederire said:

Graphene looked promising on that front to be honest. Since... Well.. it's quite abundant

Sure, as soon as they figure out how to make manufacturing of it efficient...

[Doobeedoo]

10 hours ago, leadeater said:

Lets just hope something actually eventuates from this, unlike the mentioned next big things that were never.

Batteries! 

[laminutederire]

13 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Sure, as soon as they figure out how to make manufacturing of it efficient...

They will in 20 years... when could have figured it out for 2020. No one works on it from the Fab side so it won't improve as fast as a result. Which is a shame.

[Doobeedoo]

Nice to see new elements experimentations. I do wonder how long silicon will last and what will be it's final stage. Like how much will they be able to shrink it down, picometers maybe? Build processors differently? 

[laminutederire]

2 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Nice to see new elements experimentations. I do wonder how long silicon will last and what will be it's final stage. Like how much will they be able to shrink it down, picometers maybe? Build processors differently? 

From memory, 3nm should be the last possible node.

[Doobeedoo]

9 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

From memory, 3nm should be the last possible node.

Yeah I saw that that may be. Still farfrom it, it may change. But as we see it is getting much harded to shrink it for a while now. 

[Tech_Dreamer]

11 hours ago, Cole5 said:

Im dead beat tired...But what is a 2 dimensional  material?

[laminutederire]

1 minute ago, Doobeedoo said:

Yeah I saw that that may be. Still farfrom it, it may change. But as we see it is getting much harded to shrink it for a while now. 

Does not change the fact that graphed or other materials would allow much higher clocks and so on. So shrinking is one thing but material is another

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Its a rare element. So we may have a 0.1% chance of getting a consumer product with this technology in 2035

 

59 minutes ago, Sauron said:

=virtually useless for consumer products. One of the benefits of using silicon is that it is (or was) extremely common. This won't cut it for mass production.

Uh... tellurium is used in DVDs and Blu-rays.

[Doobeedoo]

22 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

Does not change the fact that graphed or other materials would allow much higher clocks and so on. So shrinking is one thing but material is another

Well, silicon is at limits as far as clocks, there were articles about potentials for graphene lower temps and higher clocks. Shrinking who knows what next gen tech will be and offer. 

[CTR640]

13 hours ago, leadeater said:

Lets just hope something actually eventuates from this, unlike the mentioned next big things that were never.

Didn't some scientists or a certain group of people have increased and improved the rechargeable batteries for eg smartphones?

So you no longer need to recharge the smartphone every day? It's been a long time ago since I read about that somewhere but the smartphone manufacturers doesn't like that so they have prevented it?

[speedbeastxx]

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

=virtually useless for consumer products. One of the benefits of using silicon is that it is (or was) extremely common. This won't cut it for mass production.

Tha article states it does not need much for the solution to make the material.

[GOTSpectrum]

6 hours ago, laminutederire said:

From memory, 3nm should be the last possible node.

It was only a few years ago 5nm was considered the smallest we could go, then IBM made a 5nm chip. So I think this is a we will see.

[laminutederire]

5 minutes ago, Ben Quigley said:

It was only a few years ago 5nm was considered the smallest we could go, then IBM made a 5nm chip. So I think this is a we will see.

At some point you hit physical limits. Like it's not like you can always make it smaller all the time.