Alternative to silicon chips in computers
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 | Nanotechnology
Though silicon (commonly known as sand!) is one of the most available element on earth but for making silicon chips, you need a special grade of silicon which is limited on earth. The computer industry is using a lot of silicon to make silicon chips for processors but time has come when we are surely going to fact its scarcity in near future. We need an alternative to silicon chips if we want to maintain still those high speed computers at home in near future.
But walter de heer,a physicist at Georgia tech university as said that graphene can be used as an alternative to silicon and graphene will provide more faster speeds than silicon chips. Graphene is the same material (lead-Pb) found in your office desk pencils. That can be used as replacement in future instead of silicon. Graphene will be arranged in orderly manner on a single chip for use in computer. A lot of research is still needed and modification in graphene. You can’t simply use that black lead instead of silicon. It will be modified and then come to use. Still not sure, but its future is promising at least.
The problem with silicon chips is that it can do a limited processing per second due to heating but graphene transistors can do much more because they have no resistance. Also heat generated in graphene is comparatively much much less than silicon and graphene can ebb out the heat much faster than silicon,while in silicon if overheating happens, it takes time to cool down. Graphene is sure promising in areas where ultrafast transistors are needed. Carbon nanotubes are also sheets of graphene in cylindrical structure.
1 Comment to Alternative to silicon chips in computers
[...] element which has so much electron mobility at room temperature. So this opens doors to graphene replacing silicon chips. I have already written about this in my earlier post. Graphene is not much new than graphite, the [...]
March 25, 2008