epitaxy tagged posts

If computer chips could be built from semiconductors just one atom thick, they could pack far more transistors into a smaller space while using lesspower. So far, however, the technology has been held back by the weakness of “p-type” transistors, which make up half of every modern chip.

In a new study published in Nature, researchers led by Vincent Tung at the University of Tokyo have shown that atom-thin sheets of boron carbon nitride (BCN) could offer a promising solution.

Transistor bottleneck
Today’s chips rely on two types of transistors working in pairs. In “n-type” transistors, electric current is carried by negatively charged electrons...

Gallium-arsenide nanowires are on a silicon surface. Credit: Thomas Stettner/Philipp Zimmermann / TUM

Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a nanolaser, a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Thanks to an ingenious process, the nanowire lasers grow right on a silicon chip, making it possible to produce high-performance photonic components cost-effectively. This will pave the way for fast and efficient data processing with light in the future. Ever smaller, ever faster, ever cheaper – since the start of the computer age the performance of processors has doubled on average every 18 months. 50 years ago already, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore prognosticated this astonishing growth in performance. And Moore’s law seems to hold true to this day.

But the mi...