It could be a better semiconductor than silicon
Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms arrayed in a honeycomb pattern, just a single atom thick. It could be a better semiconductor than silicon – if we could fashion it into ribbons 20 to 50 atoms wide. Could DNA help?
DNA is the blueprint for life. Could it also become the template for making a new generation of computer chips based not on silicon, but on an experimental material known as graphene?
That’s the theory behind a process that Stanford chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao reveals in Nature Communications.
Bao and her co-authors, former post-doctoral fellows Anatoliy Sokolov and Fung Ling Yap, hope to solve a problem clouding the future of electronics: consumers expect silicon chips to continue getting smaller, faster and cheaper, but engineers fear that this virtuous cycle could grind to a halt.
Why has to do with how silicon chips work.
Everything starts with the notion of the semiconductor, a type of material that can be induced to either conduct or stop the flow of electricity. Silicon has long been the most popular semiconductor material used to make chips.
The basic working unit on a chip is the transistor. Transistors are tiny gates that switch electricity on or off, creating the zeroes and ones that run software.
To build more powerful chips, designers have done two things at the same time: they’ve shrunk transistors in size and also swung those gates open and shut faster and faster.
The net result of these actions has been to concentrate more electricity in a diminishing space. So far that has produced small, faster, cheaper chips. But at a certain point, heat and other forms of interference could disrupt the inner workings of silicon chips.
“We need a material that will let us build smaller transistors that operate faster using less power,” Bao said.
Graphene has the physical and electrical properties to become a next-generation semiconductor material – if researchers can figure out how to mass-produce it.
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Visually it resembles chicken wire. Electrically this lattice of carbon atoms is an extremely efficient conductor.
Bao and other researchers believe that ribbons of graphene, laid side-by-side, could create semiconductor circuits. Given the material’s tiny dimensions and favorable electrical properties, graphene nano ribbons could create very fast chips that run on very low power, she said.
“However, as one might imagine, making something that is only one atom thick and 20 to 50 atoms wide is a significant challenge,” said co-author Sokolov.
To handle this challenge, the Stanford team came up with the idea of using DNA as an assembly mechanism.
Physically, DNA strands are long and thin, and exist in roughly the same dimensions as the graphene ribbons that researchers wanted to assemble.
Chemically, DNA molecules contain carbon atoms, the material that forms graphene.
The real trick is how Bao and her team put DNA’s physical and chemical properties to work.
The researchers started with a tiny platter of silicon to provide a support (substrate) for their experimental transistor. They dipped the silicon platter into a solution of DNA derived from bacteria and used a known technique to comb the DNA strands into relatively straight lines.
Next, the DNA on the platter was exposed to a copper salt solution. The chemical properties of the solution allowed the copper ions to be absorbed into the DNA.
Next the platter was heated and bathed in methane gas, which contains carbon atoms. Once again chemical forces came into play to aid in the assembly process. The heat sparked a chemical reaction that freed some of the carbon atoms in the DNA and methane. These free carbon atoms quickly joined together to form stable honeycombs of graphene.
“The loose carbon atoms stayed close to where they broke free from the DNA strands, and so they formed ribbons that followed the structure of the DNA,” Yap said.
So part one of the invention involved using DNA to assemble ribbons of carbon. But the researchers also wanted to show that these carbon ribbons could perform electronic tasks. So they made transistors on the ribbons.
“We demonstrated for the first time that you can use DNA to grow narrow ribbons and then make working transistors,” Sokolov said.
The Latest Bing News on:
Graphene transistor
- Graphene in Biomedicine: Opportunities and Challengeson May 5, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Graphene, whose discovery won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, has been a shining star in the material science in the past few years. Owing to its interesting electrical, optical, mechanical and ...
- Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd GMGMFon May 1, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Morningstar Quantitative Ratings for Stocks are generated using an algorithm that compares companies that are not under analyst coverage to peer companies that do receive analyst-driven ratings ...
- Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd GMGon May 1, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Morningstar Quantitative Ratings for Stocks are generated using an algorithm that compares companies that are not under analyst coverage to peer companies that do receive analyst-driven ratings ...
- Graphene at 20: why the ‘wonder material’ is finally coming goodon April 30, 2024 at 6:31 am
Strong, light and with amazing electronic properties, graphene has always been touted as the “wonder material”. But two decades after it was first isolated, James McKenzie believes the graphene is ...
- Georgia Tech group create world’s first graphene-based semiconductoron April 26, 2024 at 10:13 am
A group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) have created the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene, a development that could lead to advanced ...
- Local twist angles in graphene come into viewon April 18, 2024 at 5:00 pm
which is not possible with alternative methods that use single-electron transistors to measure compressibility or nanoSQUIDs to measure magnetic fields. What is more, for samples of twisted bilayer ...
- Quantum electronics: Charge travels like light in bilayer grapheneon April 16, 2024 at 9:22 am
This unique feature has made scientists dream of using graphene for much faster and more energy-efficient transistors. The challenge has been that to make a transistor, the material needs to be ...
- Wafer-thin, stretchy and strong as steel: could ‘miracle’ material graphene finally transform our world?on April 13, 2024 at 6:30 pm
Graphene has yet to trigger an electronics ... We have reached the limit to the number of transistors that we can cram on a single chip while the energy they consume is doubling every three ...
- From strength to strengthon March 31, 2024 at 9:56 am
With exciting new results appearing every week, graphene is one of the hottest topics in physics, and may also form the basis of a new approach to electronics a decade from now. You have full ...
- Quantum interference could lead to smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient transistorson March 24, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The transistor's conductive channel is a single zinc porphyrin, a molecule that can conduct electricity. The porphyrin is sandwiched between two graphene electrodes, and when a voltage is applied ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Graphene transistor
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Graphene transistor” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
The Latest Bing News on:
Using DNA to assemble ribbons of carbon
- New study discovers cellular activity that hints recycling is in our DNAon May 10, 2024 at 11:01 am
Introns are perhaps one of our genome’s biggest mysteries. They are DNA sequences that interrupt the sensible protein-coding information in your genes, and need to be "spliced out.” ...
- Scientists unlock key to breeding 'carbon gobbling' plants with a major appetiteon May 10, 2024 at 11:00 am
The discovery of how a critical enzyme "hidden in nature's blueprint" works sheds new light on how cells control key processes in carbon fixation, a process fundamental for life on Earth.
- It shouldn’t be easy to buy synthetic DNA fragments to recreate the 1918 flu viruson May 8, 2024 at 1:30 am
The immense potential benefits of biotechnology are profoundly vulnerable to misuse. Better screening of synthetic DNA orders is a key barrier to bad actors.
- What Does DNA Stand For, and How Does It Work?on April 21, 2024 at 5:09 am
To do this they have to make copies of their genetic ... groups discovered in solution wherever DNA is present. DNA and RNA use the same five-carbon sugar, ribose, in their structure.
- These startups are using traces of DNA to spy on nature for good—and profiton April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The company also charges up to $450 for a “HoneyDNA” kit, which uses environmental DNA ... BeZero Carbon, an agency that rates the quality of carbon credits, began testing the use of eDNA ...
- Using self-assembly to make functional materials: Computational perspectiveson March 31, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Self-assembly of amphiphilic ... including micelles, ribbons, sheets and aggregates that are important in biomedical applications. Soft materials composed of crystalline superlattices of nanoparticles ...
- Using DNA to crack New England's unsolved killings: ‘We're going to drive cold cases to extinction'on December 4, 2023 at 7:18 am
Additionally, people who use consumer DNA testing services can opt to make their genetic information accessible to law enforcement, allowing investigators access to a wide pool DNA profiles to ...
- DNA Nanotechnology: Building Blocks of the Futureon March 26, 2023 at 12:45 pm
precise nanostructures using DNA as a building material. It involves designing and synthesizing DNA molecules with specific sequences that can self-assemble into desired shapes and patterns. At ...
- Using DNA to Solve Cold Cases Just Got a Lot Easier, Thanks to This Mathon November 4, 2022 at 3:10 pm
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below." A new method for solving forensic genetic puzzles is ten times faster than the current method ...
- DNA and Geneson January 22, 2022 at 10:09 pm
Genes control everything from hair color to blood sugar by telling cells which proteins to make, how much ... Popularized by television and cinema, using DNA to match blood, hair or saliva ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Using DNA to assemble ribbons of carbon
[google_news title=”” keyword=”using DNA to assemble ribbons of carbon” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]