This Chip Could Change Computing Forever

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incog hi welcome to another episode of

Cold

Fusion picture this a phone that you

don't have to charge for days or a

laptop that can last a week without

recharging well that kind of thing is on

the cards with what we're about to talk

about in this episode Walt deir may look

like your average Professor but he and

his team have been working for 10 years

to flip the world of computing on its

head with their recent breakthrough at

Georgia Tech University we could see

computers and phones that up to 10 times

faster operating in the realm of

terahertz not only that but they'd use

less power and produce less heat his

team's findings were published in the

journal Nature people knew about

graphine it had been heavily studied in

many different disciplines and uh

surface scientists knew about it

chemists knew about it but nobody had

actually thought that this stuff might

be good for

electronics and so in 2001 uh we

basically came to the idea that maybe

graphine could be used for electronics

and that's how the whole story started

really so just a heads up this video may

be a bit more technical than normal but

I did just find it fascinating so in

this quick episode let's check out how

they did it and what this means for us

and Technology as a

whole you are watching cold fusion

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TV today semiconductors specifically the

element silicon Powers our world in the

1950s very very clever scientists

figured out how to manipulate silicon to

behave like tiny switches you could join

thousands of them together and program

them to do things we call this a

computer over time our whole modern

world has been built on these tiny

little silicon switches we call these

tiny switches transistors and humans

have made incredible progress with

silicon transistors just look at Mo's

law which states that the number of

transistors in an integrated circuit

doubles every 2 years or even better yet

just look at the devices around you from

your car to your fridge computer phone

and TV they're

everywhere over the past 70 years the

only thing that we really did was pack

these transistors into ever tighter

spaces to give us more processing power

but the thing is we're now just reaching

the limits of silicon transistors in

terms of speed heat generation and

miniaturization but what if we could

make transistors even better 10 times

better enter

graphine silicon carbide it's a crystal

made out of silicon and carbon atoms if

you heat the silicon carbide up the

Silicon evaporates and what's left over

is the carbon so all these carbon

molecule atoms are sitting on that

surface and then they simply connect

together to make this sheet of graphine

I've talked about graphine a few times

on the channel but in summary it's a 2d

material made from a uniform honeycomb

lettus of carbon atoms one layer thick

its structure allows electrons to move

through it with minimal resistance and

since an electrical current is just

electrons this property makes graphine

one of the most conductive materials

known to man it's also strong light and

basically overall a Wonder material the

only problem was that up until 10 years

ago it was pretty hard to make in a

cost-effective way but fortunately

growing graphine on silicon carbide

synthesizing it VI chemical vapor

deposition and liquid phase

electromechanical exfoliation with a

three graphine manufacturing

breakthroughs that made it viable in the

the last decade and after that the

applications came through one of the

most famous of which was a graphine

charging Bank from El jet it could

charge a massive 10,000 milliamp hours

in 30 minutes five times faster than the

competition reviewers around the world

were stunned when it came out back in

2021 it also boasted five times as many

charge cycles as a regular lithium ion

battery okay so you know graphine is

cool and it has its applications but as

a transistor that makes no sense for the

technically inclined you might see that

something doesn't add up straight away

as mentioned graphine is one of the best

most efficient and most rapid conductors

known to man but a traditional

transistor is a semiconductor that means

it's not quite a conductor or an

insulator but somewhere in between a

transistor needs to fit the class of

being a semiconductor and that's because

this in between property that

semiconductors have allows them to be

manipulated to turn on and off like a

switch in other words it it has to

change between conducting and insulation

so that's the major problem for a

graphine transistor its conductivity can

never be switched off and well that

would make a pretty lousy switch the

thing is there's actually a work around

to this called band Gap engineering and

this is where the genius comes in but

first we need to understand what a band

Gap

is now I found this next part pretty

interesting so we all know that

materials are made of atoms which have a

nucleus and electrons that move around

it Rons can only be in certain discrete

layers or shells above the nucleus which

we can call

bands now imagine a ladder think about

the steps of the ladder as different

electron shells around an atom's nucleus

in a given material the lower steps are

what we call the veence band this band

is where electrons reside normally

electrons are comfortable here and they

don't want to leave now the upper steps

belong to the conduction band at this

level conduction of electricity easily

occurs when when the electrons are here

because they can just fly off now

imagine a gap between the two sections

of the ladder this Gap represents the

band Gap in an insulator this Gap is

relatively wide so it takes a lot of

effort for the electrons to get to the

conduction band so the material doesn't

conduct electricity well in contrast in

a semiconductor the band Gap is narrower

compared to an insulator electrons can

climb up but with some external energy

required this allows semiconductors to

conduct electricity under certain

conditions

in metals there's effectively no band

Gap electrons are pretty much having a

party and can move freely throughout the

material and this is why metals are good

conductors of electricity graphine is a

strange case because it conducts

electricity better than anything else

but it's not a metal so scientists

wanted to take advantage of the high

conducting benefit of graphine but also

wanted to be able to make it stop

conducting on command if this could be

done it would make for an amazing new

kind of transistor since 2008 scientists

have been trying to use band Gap

engineering to make graphine behave like

a

semiconductor they all gave it a good go

but just couldn't get the thing to work

the resulting transistors performed

poorly and were

useless Walt and the researchers

perfected an existing manufacturing

technique and managed to achieve a high

quality band Gap in graphine for the

very first time here's how it worked the

method involved heating silicon carbide

in an argon filled quartz tube inside

the tube is two silicon carbide layers

shown in green a highfrequency AC

current is run through a copper coil

around the quartz tube and this heats

the layers to 1,000° C through induction

the heat causes the Silicon which is the

white circles to evaporate and quote

leave behind a carbon Rich surface that

forms into graphine and quote and that's

shown in Black the high frequency of the

heating coil ensures even and robust

graphine deposits

the whole process is efficient with the

necessary materials like silicon carbide

and quartz tubes being relatively

inexpensive the components for the whole

setup cost

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$20 the scientists created individual

transistors that when measured and

tested outperformed current silicon

chips in speed they were also successful

in producing larger robust semiconductor

Wafers here's a quote from De quote our

research is distinct from other

approaches because we have produced

large of semiconducting SEC on a deficit

free atomically flat silicon carbide

teres silicon carbide is hardly

developed readily available electronic

material that is fully compatible with

conventional microelectronics processing

methods end quote so if all of that went

over your head what does this all mean

what's the bigger picture number one the

creation of semiconducting graphine this

most recent paper we started to figure

out how to turn graphine into a

semiconductor because natural graphine

is not a semiconductor the Georgia Tech

Team created graphine with a band Gap

meaning that this Wonder material is

finely applicable to

microelectronics number two better

computers the good thing about graphine

is not only can you make things smaller

and faster and uh with less heat

dissipation you're actually using

properties of electrons that are not

accessible in Silicon so this is really

a paradigm shift it's a different way

way I'm doing Electronics the graphine

semiconductor that was created had very

high electron mobility and this is

crucial for high frequency terahertz

range electronics and for context our

chips today operate in the gigahertz

range higher electron Mobility allows

for faster switching of transistors

which is essential for improving the

speed and efficiency of electronic

devices imagine your laptop or phone

lasting for days at a time while being

five times

faster number three simple and

cost-effective methods

this method involves standard equipment

and relatively inexpensive materials

it's also compatible with conventional

chip fabrication methods and this

compatibility is essential for

integrating into existing manufacturing

processes that means it's scalable and

economically feasible for broader

adoption in the semiconductor industry

and that's something that's pretty rare

for such research

breakthroughs number four the potential

for Quantum Computing applications the

team also noted that there's a potential

for using this High Mobility graphine in

Quantum Computing the quantum mechanical

wave properties of electrons in graphine

is much more pronounced at low

temperatures versus silicon and this

could lead to new types of quantum

devices and Computing methods and this

represents a paradigm shift from

traditional silicon-based

Electronics so with all of that being

said there is one downside that I

haven't seen reported anywhere else when

researching this the band gap for this

graphine method is 0.6 electron volts

and this is versus 1.1 electron volts

typical in Silicon so let me break down

down what that means while a smaller

band Gap could be beneficial for

applications such as a new kind of solar

panel a CPU is another case if we use

this graphine semiconductor as is in a

CPU the smaller band Gap could lead to

current leakage and this is when a

device still leaks a little bit of

current when it's supposed to be in its

off State this could increase power

consumption and heat generation undoing

some of that wonder that graphine had in

the first place but that being said it's

not a huge deal at this stage and I'm

sure that with time the band Gap number

will improve as they make refinements to

the process if there's no more hiccups

along the way this event is massive and

could change the field of computing as

we not I wish the team all the best

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now back to the video many many things

that that are possible with graphine

that are not possible with silicon you

can connect it to biological molecules

for example you can interface it with

something called molecular Electronics

uh a whole bunch of stuff like that so I

think we're looking at a whole new

landscape opening up in electronics okay

so that's the story of the world's first

silicon graphine semiconductor if you

did like that feel free to subscribe

there's plenty of other interesting

stuff on this channel on science

technology and business my name is toogo

and you've been watching cold fusion and

I'll catch you again soon for the next

episode cheers guys have a good one

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