Most groundbreaking technology news has to do with things like connecting computers to brains, fancy robots, AI tools, and other futuristic technologies. These technologies are not limited by software capabilities, but rather hardware. Semiconductors are essential to electronics and hardware that provide the basis for all technologies. In chemistry, a semiconductor is a material that can be harnessed to conduct electricity or to not conduct electricity. Outside of chemistry, semiconductors are used in all electronics.
Semiconductors, which make up microchips, are essential to all electronics. They are generally made from silicon, germanium, or gallium arsenide.
Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors or chips in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. This trend started slowing down in recent years, as the designs of 3d semiconductors have been maxed out.
However, a new material for semiconductors could totally change the playing field: graphene. Walter De Heer and other researchers from Georgia Tech developed the first functional 2d semiconductor made out of graphene. It is extremely thin and may have ten times more electron mobility than silicon. The carbon bonds that makeup graphene are the strongest bonds known. Modern electronics have been reaching their limits because silicon semiconductors are reaching their limits, but with this new carbon-based semiconductor, there is much more room for growth. “By growing graphene on silicon carbide wafers, binding them together caused semiconductor properties”. The researchers spent over ten years working on this development because natural graphene doesn’t have semiconducting properties.
It’s likely that the shift from silicon to graphene will be slow to start, but as industries begin to support these chips, it will only become easier to incorporate on a large scale. And it’s not just in semiconductors that scientists are finding graphene’s potential. Researchers are finding graphene to be a potential solver of the sand crisis, they are finding it to have unique properties that will start to be used in all sorts of things. The principal problem with graphene is that it may be difficult to manufacture in bulk. If this problem is resolved and further research is done on graphene, we might just see flying cars in our lifetime.
