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posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 23 2015, @08:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-little-dope-here,-a-little-dope-there dept.

In a new study, scientists have opened a band gap in graphene by carefully doping both sides of bilayer graphene in a way that avoids creating disorder in the graphene structure. Delicately opening up a band gap in graphene in this way enabled the researchers to fabricate a graphene-based memory transistor with the highest initial program/erase current ratio reported to date for a graphene transistor (34.5 compared to 4), along with the highest on/off ratio for a device of its kind (76.1 compared to 26), while maintaining graphene's naturally high electron mobility (3100 cm2/V·s).

The researchers, led by Professor Young Hee Lee at Sungkyunkwan University and the Institute for Basic Science in Suwon, South Korea, have published their paper on the new method for opening up a band gap in graphene in a recent issue of ACS Nano.

"We successfully demonstrated a graphene transistor with a high on/off ratio and mobility by chemical methods and showed its feasibility as a memory application with a significantly improved program/erase current ratio," first author Si Young Lee, at the Institute for Basic Science and Harvard University


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:02PM (#240712)

    Graphene and CNT are exciting to materials and electrical engineers but they have also been shown to be pretty toxic if inhaled or ingested in anyway. Like DNA damaging toxic. They are so freaking small I'm not sure how you filter or control were they go either.

    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:08PM

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:08PM (#240714) Homepage Journal

      Ship it to Belarus, pay a bunch of little kids to desolder the chips with blowtorches.

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:24PM

      by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:24PM (#240720) Journal

      You wouldn't smoke your CPU.... would you?

      It could pose problems for designing nanobots, which will be expected to face casualties inside your body, swim around until death, or be excreted.

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    • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday September 23 2015, @10:37PM

      by Zz9zZ (1348) on Wednesday September 23 2015, @10:37PM (#240743)

      The methods are there, whether they will be used is another matter. Chlorine is even smaller yet we work with it all the time.

      Hazard suites, sealed rooms with proper ventilation and filters/traps to keep it from exiting the premises, etc.

      --
      ~Tilting at windmills~
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:09AM

        by Francis (5544) on Thursday September 24 2015, @05:09AM (#240844)

        Chlorine is something that we know how to handle and it doesn't generally just hang out by itself, usually it bonds with something. If you ingest a bit it's usually not a particular problem. And we have decades of experience working with it in the household. People generally understand when they're working with chlorine products that there are risks.

        Nano-materials are not something that we have that kind of relationship with yet. The risks are largely unknown and when they are known are unlikely to show up on a warning label. It's highly likely that at least some of these particles will wind up the same way that asbestos did. Seemingly OK at the time, but years later causing untold amounts of suffering and misery.

        The point here isn't to abandon the research, the point here is to realize what short-sighted jackasses people are being and insist that the stuff is put through reasonable product safety testing before being spread all over the place.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:22PM (#240718)

    http://www.livescience.com/52207-faster-3d-computer-chip.html [livescience.com]

    A new method of designing and building computer chips could lead to blisteringly quick processing at least 1,000 times faster than the best existing chips are capable of, researchers say. The new method, which relies on materials called carbon nanotubes, allows scientists to build the chip in three dimensions. The 3D design enables scientists to interweave memory, which stores data, and the number-crunching processors in the same tiny space, said Max Shulaker, one of the designers of the chip, and a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford University in California. Reducing the distance between the two elements can dramatically reduce the time computers take to do their work, Shulaker said Sept. 10 here at the "Wait, What?" technology forum hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research wing of the U.S. military.

    [...] In 2013, the team built a CNT computer, which they described in the journal Nature [nature.com]. That computer, however, was slow and bulky, with relatively few transistors.

    Now, they have created a system for stacking memory and transistor layers, with tiny wires connecting the two. The new 3D design has slashed the transit time between transistor and memory, and the resulting architecture can produce lightning-fast computing speeds up to 1,000 times faster than would otherwise be possible, Shulaker said. Using the new architecture, the team has built a variety of sensor wafers [ieee.org] that can detect everything from infrared light to particular chemicals in the environment.

    The next step is to scale the system further, to make even bigger, more complicated chips.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:09AM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:09AM (#242084) Journal

      Here's a link to the 2013 paper (PDF) [bilkent.edu.tr] that is unencumbered.

      No luck on the 2015 IEEE paper :|

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  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:06AM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:06AM (#242083) Journal

    It took some digging but here it is (PDF) [researchgate.net] (without the additional surplus 3rd party cover page).

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))