Communications of the ACM
Graphene Competitor sed to Make Circuits
Atom-thick sheets of molybdenite at the end of these gold leads act as transistors.
Credit: cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne
The first logic circuits made using atom-thick sheets of molybdenite (MoS2) suggest the material could be an alternative to graphene as a possible solution to the problem of getting more power out of silicon-based computer components. MoS2 could enable electronics to get smaller without facing problems such as oxidation, which is associated with extremely small silicon-based electronics, says Swiss Federal Institute of Technology researcher Andras Kis.
Sheets of the material 0.65 nanometers thick and about 10 microns across were pulled from crystals of naturally occurring molybdenite. "The nice thing about our material is that sometimes it can conduct current, sometimes it doesn't," Kis says. MoS2 also has a naturally occurring band gap that is suitable for use in electronics, while graphene does not.
"We're starting to see that the fun is going to come with mixing and matching these [two-dimensional] materials on different substrates for different functionality," says Columbia University researcher James Hone. However, Kis notes that questions still linger on issues such as how to effect large-scale molybdenite growth.
From Technology Review
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