This New Semiconductor Could Revolutionize Computing

Researchers at the Georgia Institute for Technology have found a new semiconductor that’s a really good candidate for making computers faster and smaller than ever. Amazingly enough, it works by combining graphene with silicon carbide, to give a material with a sensible band gap that still has a high thermal conductivity.

Correction to what I say at 02:54 --- That should have been voltage, not current.

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[dalecramer]

I worked for ASML from 1998 to 2010 and saw wafers go from 6 in to 12. Line size from 1 micron to 22 nm. If we can figure the graphene thing out, it will be very exciting!😊

[virtual]

As a Georgia Tech alumnus, I get to say this advance is the result of the efforts of MY tribe! (You aren't supposed to notice that the majority of the authors are at Tianjin University in China.)

[JoshtMoody]

Also, @SabineHossenfelder. There are some new ideas emerging about being able to bond semiconductors directly to a diamond backplane for RF amplifiers! Can you imagine how fast it will be able to take the heat away? You can really push the envelope! :D

[Anders]

I believe something like that will become possible, because it fits with Ray Kurzweil's long-term prediction of how when one technology paradigm runs out of steam another paradigm replaces it and continues the exponential trend. Such as relays, vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated silicon circuits and then in the future maybe things like graphene and/or photonic microchips.

[philm]

Reminds me of Michael Crichton's book Congo (1980), wherein a tech company tries to scoop up an African mine that has type IIB diamonds, which are doped with boron, making them semiconductors. Diamonds also have a thermal conductivity >5x higher than copper and close to 20x the thermal conductivity of silicon, meaning they can disperse extreme amounts of heat.

[Grendelmk]

They've been declaring Moore's Law dead since I was a kid, and I'm north of 50. Faster clocks, multipatterning, stacking, multithreading, etc, keep pushing performance. Incidentally, the idea of transistors on carbon substrates predates graphene, with diamond semiconductors proposed in the early 90s. While expensive, they worked better as they got hotter up to about 700 C, and would not fail until over 900 C. And yet, we're still using SiO2 :P

[DougOptional-vp]

3:02 Typo "Voltage", not current. To have electrons transit the energy band gap, a sufficiently high "Voltage" is applied across the gap.

[johndododoe]

I recall that around 1990 during the first years of micro mechanics, lecturers talked of using the production methods then invented to lithographically etch cooling channels in microchips so cold gasses could cool the electronics . The entire concept was easy manufacturing of the tiny channels using existing mass production equipment then connecting outside pipework during packaging along with the external gold wires .

[artscience]

An interesting video, and you explained almost everything correctly. I would quibble with your explanation that in a semiconductor “if you apply enough current” you can get the device to conduct. I think a better way to say it is that if you apply a voltage, you can bend the energy bands in the semiconductor, which creates a condition where electrons can aggregate and move freely to create a current. When you remove the voltage, the material reverts to being close to an insulator and the device “turns off.” As always, I really enjoy and appreciate your work!

[alanmarston]

Thanks. Takes me back a few years where we waited for the next device to catch up to what we wanted yesterday. The ol' hurry up and wait routine.😁

[LuisAldamiz]

Very promising. Of course we will have to wait to see if it can be scaled up to industrial production but I can only imagine that it will, after all modern semiconductor industry is also extremely delicate and sophisticated.

[homeromoura]

Sometimes ( many times) I feel a kind of ignorant regarding that subject… but this lady make me understand! She is great!

[Name-otxw]

I feel like everyone gets Moor's law backwards. It was less a theoretical prediction of how fast miniturization would go but was a benchmark to aim for. A self-fulfilling prophecy, we could say.

The whole purpose of Moor's law was to give the varied software/hardware producers a benchmark to aim for over your project's lifespan.

E: In the short term, we're going 3d, just stacking chips and calling it good enough.

[alsmith]

I believe Sabine is mistaken about transistor size at around 0:40. The process size isn't the size of the transistor but rather a loose approximation the the smallest feature size that can be made using the technology they have (a pixel if you will). Different manufacturers use different standards so one company saying they can do 4nm may not be doing better than another company that says they can do 5nm. I couldn't find the actual size of whole transistors, but looking at transistor densities on Wikipedia, I saw that the latest and greatest was about 125M transistors per mm^2 e.g. Nvidia AD102 GPU ; this works out as transistors having a separation of about 90nm; we might guestimate that the transistors themselves would be perhaps half of that.

[gatodragon]

Nice overview of a very recent result, but imo it has to be noted that majority of the authors are from Tianjin University, China, so GeorgiaTech is not the main contributor here

[Dr.M.VincentCurley]

I truly thought Moore's law dead myself. However, it never ceases to amaze me what the motivation of large amounts of money and fame will inspire either. Hats off to Georgia, I didn't know they had it in them.

[MichaelPaoli]

semiconductors - it's not so much the current that gets them to/from their relatively (non)conductive states, but more so voltage, e.g. bias voltage. And this applies even more so for Field Effect Transistors (FETs) and Insulated Gate Field Effect Transistors (IGFETs). Though regular transistors work more as current multipliers, it's still that bias voltage that gets them to conductive state (likewise for diodes). FETs and ITFETs, however, work even more so like voltage controlled devices - like ye olde vacuum tube grid elements - than conventional transistors. So, even though its the current that transistors multiply, it's still that initial bias voltage that gets base-emitter junction up to it's (relatively) conductive state.

[immortalsofar]

I did come up with a design for architecture that had small, relatively slow modules that were connected in 3D. I was on acid at the time but, given a material that could do this in a 3 dimensional lattice, it would work. The secret is synchronisation so that everything doesn't try to happen at once.

[johnnotrealname]

The issue is that legacy chips are still the backbone of so much. When this gets matured they will be present in newer stuff sure but older platforms, in a military sense especially where old is writing something, do not rely on such items. There needs to be a way to assure Taiwan and yet dominate newer chips too. Science it is!

[malectric]

The very first blue LEDs that I know of used SiC - first approach to obtaining the necessary bandgaps. I have 10 of them in some Christmas tree light strings I made several decades ago. BTW, I would use the word "voltage" rather than current in your description of how semiconductors work. Voltage/potential difference is what gets electrons (current) flowing.