Silicon is very good.
Proof of its greatness is worth more than 70 years of steady progress in electronic computing, from the first primate desktop calculators to that pocket-sized supercomputer we call a smartphone.
Create a silicon just right, shape it into a transistor, and it can be both a conductor and an insurer, depending on what cost you run through it – a basic property without all the digital conversion, and between -web, and everything from TikTok to covid vaccines would be impossible.
But silicon shows age. The reliable biennial doubling in the computing power of microchips, known as Moore’s Law, has been slowing down, and that could soon come to an end. It is virtually impossible, using conventional methods, to carve the elements in silicon, such as transistors, under about 3 nanometers in their smallest size. (To illustrate that, a 3-nanometer film can be as small as 15 atoms thick.) So the tech industry is looking for other surprises to replace old silicon – or at least go for it. along with it to greatly increase capabilities.
Researchers on the cutting edge of physics, chemistry and engineering are experimenting with exotic sounding materials for use in microchips. They include graphene, black phosphorus, transition metal dichalcogenides, and boron nitride nanoparticles. Together, they are known as 2-D materials, because they are flat sheets of just an atom or two thick. Almost unknown just 20 years ago, they are now routinely made in a laboratory, using such different methods as a mixer and as difficult as depositing valves at high temperatures.