BBC:
To make faster computer chips, researchers are seeking to
replace silicon with graphene, whose electrical conductivity is
hundreds of times greater. Unfortunately, although graphene is
an excellent conductor, it makes a poor semiconductor. It is
also very fragile. To resolve those difficulties, researchers
at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in
Germany have been working with structures that consist of
graphene sheets atop silicon carbide wafers. By heating the
material and etching channels into it with a high-energy beam
of atoms, the researchers have created multilayer chips with
both conducting (graphene) and semiconducting (SiC) regions. As
described in a
paper published yesterday in
Nature Communications, the devices perform well even
at megahertz frequencies.
