Communications of the ACM
Engineering Material Magic
University of Utah materials science and engineering associate professor Ashutosh Tiwari and his team have discovered a new material which allows electrical charges to move through it much faster than materials like silicon.
Credit: Dan Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering
A team led by University of Utah professor Ashutosh Tiwari says it has discovered a new kind of two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting material for electronics.
Composed of elements of tin and oxygen, or tin monoxide, the semiconductor is a layer of 2D material only one atom thick. The benefit is that electrons "can only move in one layer so it's much faster," Tiwari says.
The researchers call it the first stable P-type 2D semiconductor material ever in existence, and they say it could lead to computers and smartphones that are 100 times faster than regular devices.
The researchers also say the processors will not get as hot as normal computer chips made with three-dimensional materials, which have more friction because electrons bounce around inside the layers in all directions.
The computing devices that use the new material would consume less energy, and Tiwari hopes to have a prototype device in two to three years.
"Now we have everything--we have P-type 2D semiconductors and N-type 2D semiconductors," he notes. "Now things will move forward much more quickly."
From UNews (UT)
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