Scientists edge towards mass production of silicon substitute

Thursday, 10 June 2010, 19:19 IST   |    2 Comments
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London: Scientists have leaped over a major hurdle in efforts to begin commercial production of a form of carbon that could rival silicon in its potential for revolutionising electronic devices ranging from supercomputers to cell phones. Called graphene, the material consists of a layer of graphite 50,000 times thinner than a human hair with unique electronic properties. Victor Aristov of the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, Germany, and colleagues indicate that graphene has the potential to replace silicon in high-speed computer processors and other devices. Standing in the way, however, are today's cumbersome, expensive production methods, which result in poor-quality graphene and are not practical for industrial scale applications. Aristov and colleagues report that they have developed "a very simple procedure for making graphene on the cheap". They describe growing high-quality graphene on the surface of commercially available silicon carbide wafers to produce material with excellent electronic properties, said a release of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It "represents a huge step toward technological application of this material as the synthesis is compatible with industrial mass production," their report notes. The study appears in ACS' Nano Letters, a monthly journal.
Source: IANS
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