Three-Atom Ultrathin Transistor May Lead To Future Transparent Gadgets
For more than five decades, silicon has been the backbone of the electronics world. Scientists are looking for materials to replace silicon. A recent research revealed that it is possible to manufacture automatically thin materials.
The researchers of Stanford University developed a way to mass produce materials and electronic just three atoms thick using molybdenum disulfide. This tiny electronic chip could lead to screens and it may be easy to put and carry around. This electronic chip would be transparent and flexible.
It would be the single step to make possible transparent television, bendy phones and electronic gadgets on a glass. Kirby Smithe and colleagues' goal was to build up a manufacturing process to turn single-layer chips. The single-layer material is called molybdenum disulfide.
Films of molybdenum disulfide make a good switch-conductor that could control electricity. It is a sheet of molybdenum atoms between two layers of sulfur atoms. The challenge was making a crystal big molybdenum disulfide enough to manufacture a chip because it is 25 times wider.
A single molecule of this sheet is just six-tenths of a nanometer thick. On the contrary, silicon microchip is about 100 nanometers thick. There's a big difference! In the world of length, a nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
The process of refinement of this ultrathin chip is called chemical vapor deposition. This genius method manufactured a single-molecule-thick molybdenum disulfide chips measuring about 1.5 millimeters (0.06 inches) wide and 25 million times wider than the others.
Scientists used electron beams to etch the Stanford University logo onto the molybdenum disulfide films. They also crave portraits of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. These etch will inspire future researchers to focus on the main goal of putting molybdenum sulfide layers onto silicon layers. In the near future, they are planning to make ultrathin microchips vertically instead of just horizontally.
