@Whoopsi: Yeah, wouldn't ballistic transfer come from kinetic theory, and not QM?

Mio

Well if you want to make good Field Effect Transistors (FET) you'd like to have as close to a current sheet to form your transistor channel as possible. That means a very thin layer of highly conductive material, hey, just like this stuff! In an implanted GaAs MESFET the transistor channel is rather deep as compared to something like a pHEMT transistor which has a thin layer defined by a flat semiconductor junction and is pretty much the fastest type of FET available right now. Anyway, to make a transistor out of the graphene all you would really need is a teeny sheet of the stuff with two conductively attached electrodes on two sides of the sheet. You also need a third terminal (the gate) which would be connected to a small conductor that would lay over the channel insulated from it by a thin layer or layers of some insulator material. And there you have it, a small FET (probably more like a MOSFET) that can switch puny amounts of current very quickly. You could dope the graphene if you wanted to just to tweak the performance. I don't know why I know this stuff.

GiltProto

There is something a bit off about the claim that it "holds great promise for replacing conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon". Just because it has lower resistivity doesn't mean it's a better candidate. Take for example GaAs, it has higher electron mobility... and although it looked like the next silicon, it lacked serveral characteristics (Read [en.wikipedia.org] advantages/disadvantages of GaAs compared to Silicon). Not to diminish the achievement of the research, but it always annoys me to hear so many people talking about replacing silicon.

Perhaps there is a material (or more likely a technology) that will put silicon "out", but to base that on a single feature... such as low resistivity is a bit unwarranted. The biggest hurdle will always be fabrication/cost... but placing that aside, a quick search couldn't find anything on hole mobility (although I would assume it to be quite high), as well as the fact that there isn't a natural insulator, or dopants.

I'll preface this by saying I don't know too much about the subject, but I don't see how this material can be anything more than the connections between transistors. Advancements in interconnects (there is definitely a better word) is, however, an important area of research as the cross section gets smaller and smaller the resistance increases and a material such as this seems to be highly beneficial assuming it was integrated well.

In any case I didn't want to ramble for so long, but the title (and the original article) just rubbed me the wrong way. I think there is a reason they didn't make this claim in the Nanotechnology paper they wrote.

@ wikkit, I believe that ideally, graphene exhibits ballistic transfer, or at least only for short (i.e. ~500 nm) distances. Ballistic I believe means that mean free path of the electrons is longer than the distance it needs to travel... hence if the distance is only 500 nm, then the electrons won't be bouncing around but will travel directly and unhindered. I don't believe ballistic transfer is a quantum effect, and it doesn't mean the electron magically appears at the other end (where ever that is) instantly. Overall ballistic transfer means lower resistance. But currently Fuhrer states that the mobility is approximately 2 orders of magnitude less than the ideal case due to defects... and for ballistic conduction the material must be free of impurities ([en.wikipedia.org]).

Anyway, the more I look into it the more interesting it all is.

Whoopsi

if they can build transistors and the like with this material, then its going to be pretty fast and cool and i mean cool in both senses

pharago

I couldn't help but think what an unfortunate name for the professor.

pdok

@allenjnl

Graphene has a quantum effect called "ballistic transfer" where the electron that enters one end magically appears at the other end at the same instant. This is the kind of stuff that physicists and material scientists have wet dreams about.

wikkit

@allenjnl

Physics lesson:
There's a reason the speed of light is quoted as 'in a vacuum', anything (light, sound, electrons) slows down when it encounters matter. The electron still travels the same speed, but it gets scattered within the material, effectively slowing its speed.

wikkit

Breasts* are made of silicone, which is a lot different from silicon.

Some of us, however, do not object to silicon breasts.

*non-edit fix: Real breasts are made of flesh. I'm of course referring to breast implants.

cyborgtroy

so this is more cunductive and has less resistivity than other materials. ANybody else notice they are just saying the same thing twice. More conductive is the same thing as less resistivity. Clearly those writing the article have a firm grasp of these concepts. I have a black blanket, and it doesn't reflect light, and it absorbs light.

jkr

Boron is a bigger buzz kill than Buzz Killington.

strider_mt2k

Silicon is a semiconductor. You need conductors, semiconductors and insulators to make chips.

way_down_east

But how will it look as breasts?

skittlzncombos

I think what it means is that there is 100 times more resistence in silicon then in graphene

Chamellion

100 times faster? I thought the speed of electrical flow was always 186,000 miles/sec. give or take. Maybe less resistance to current flow? Might be less electrons coming down the theoretical bobsled run, but they're all clocking pretty much the same E.T. on the same track. At least that's what I've always been told. WTF?

allenjnl

Stupid Boron messing up the party.

Molbork

For some reason this made me think of the time when you used a pencil (get it? GraphITe keke. Sweet jeebus I'm tired) to unlock the AMD Thunderbirds. Aaah memories.

BoinK

Nerdy talk going on up in here.

jibbly

@allenjnl: Electrons travel through different materials at different speeds. This is mostly due to collisions with other atoms in the material (or by getting within the effective area of a charged partical) which deflect them in random directions. Thus it takes them longer to get from one end of the material to the other.

vision646

Its good to see such a well thought out dissection of the issue here. As someone who has very little knowledge on the topic, it makes for an informative and entertaining read, a rare find these days.

lynxminus

@allenjnl: I think he's talking about the drift velocity or Fermi velocity, hard to tell given the way the article is written.

TommyImages

@wikkit: and @allenjnl:
Electrons do not travel at the speed of light in a vacuum or anywhere else. Electrons are matter, not energy.
Light does travel at the speed of light, whether it's at visible light frequencies we know and love, higher (UV or X-ray), lower (IR or microwave), or much lower (radio/TV/etc). These are waves, (or energy particles for the quantum physicists), not matter particles such as electrons.

MikeHinds

@MikeHinds:

If light doesn't travel at the speed of light, someone really fubar'd the name. Besides, what happened to the wave-particle duality?

@Whoopsi:

Graphene is replacing carbon nanotubes as the futuristic material of choice for FET development because graphene is easier to handle/process. CNT's require sorting by size and conductivity. Both oxidize extremely easily though, and as you pointed out, there is no natural oxide as there is in silicon. It's a material that has massive promises, but is still in its infancy. If I remember correctly, the theoretical hole/electron mobilities are almost identical. The experimental values are orders of magnitude lower though. You'd have to look through some of the bigger science journals to get the juicy info.

wikkit

Carbon is the most awesome element. Coal, diamonds, graphite, buckyballs, and nanotubes.

daveNYC

All I'm saying is that it's all very "Tron-Esque"

Geisrud

@MikeHinds:

Electrons don't carry the energy, the electromagnetic field does. What you're interested in is the speed of the field; which can by rule never be greater than the speed of light (obviously).

Admiral Ackbar

@cyborgtroy: silicon and silicone still come from the same source material_ They are merely refined to different specs_

Kind of like Diesel and Gasoline_ Both fuel - both come from the ssame source - just refined to different levels and used for different purposes_

But basiclly - yeah - silicon and silicone are both glass_

uberfu

hey, the terps are good for something this year :)

bobvilla

Youve forgotten that to find the hypotenous one must add the square of both sides AND take the root of that result

pevans34

@pevans34:
ahaha. Genius.

Terrorsaur.

@pevans34: but if you connect the hypotenuse' of two isosceles tringles, you're right back at "square" one...

phor11

They should rename Sylicon Valley to Graphene Valley

phamou

refer to the top of the page... boron, lol, research more into how processors are made... boron really messed the party up :(

tsukasa0002