Sciam Observations Blog posted 3/31/08 | 0 comments

Graphene Could Be the New Silicon

Recent investigations by physicists at the University of Maryland indicate that grapheneone-atom-thick sheets of carboncould one day supplant silicon as the material of choice for important applications such as high-speed computer chips and biochemical sensors. The research team, led by Michael Fuhrer, found that in graphene the intrinsic limit to the charge mobility, a measure of how well a material conducts electricity when subjected to an electric field, is higher than any other known material at room temperature. Graphenes high mobility thus makes it promising for use in transistors that must switch extremely rapidly. If other factors that limit mobility in graphene, such as impurities, can be eliminated, its intrinsic mobility would be more than 100 times higher than that of silicon.... [more]