I had never considered this.
Wonder if these materials are the kind of thing the "make your own integrated circuits" people would be able to use?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/16-bit-risc-v-proces...
Modern microprocessor built from complementary carbon nanotube transistors https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1493-8
> at frequencies up to 25 kilohertz
How high could this technique go?
From the abstract[1]:
This enabled circuit operation below 3 V with an operating frequency of up to 25 kHz, which was constrained by parasitic capacitances
I would guess process improvements would help a lot towards lowering those parasitics. So I wouldn't take this initial attempt as a guide for ultimate speed.
Since this is 2D materials, a capacitor is a dielectric sandwiched by two conductors and capacitance scales linearly with area, I would assume just scaling things down would help immensely with parasitic capacitance. Changing materials or process could also change the dielectric constant which also affects the capacitance linearly.
Paper is sadly not open access, so I can't check if they mention this or have done some theoretical peak calculations or something. Would indeed be interesting to know.
Molybdenum and tungsten both have melting point much higher than silicon, Maybe these circuits could be a good candidate for Venus rovers?
I don't see how that would be relevant since the melting temperature of Silicon is already _significantly_ higher than temperatures on Venus can reach outside of reentry
> molybdenum disulfide for n-type transistors and tungsten diselenide for p-type transistors
Yes? But it’s been in research for a decade or two, based on a quick search.
It’s confusing to me because moly d is a very common lubricant, even for home uses.
Something that is nice with MoS2 and the others are transition metal dichalcogenides and have some beneficial physical properties like a natural electronic bandgap, unlike silicon.
Isn't it a good lubricant because it's easily split into 2D layers?
I wonder how this compares in speed and capabilities to photonic computers
I was wondering that too!
Isn’t tungsten much much more expensive than silicon and harder to work with?
Does its price really matter for amounts used in chips?
A small step towards Sophons
Well with all the sabre-rattling by Kratsios on space time control, Sophons is not that far fetched.
Well—I, for one, welcome our new Trisolaran overlords!
WTF is up with that illustration at the top of the article?
Some attempt to visually represent molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide with the keys of a QWERTY keyboard.
Which if it was done properly would have WSe2 and MoS2 rather than seemingly random keys
It shows just the symbols of the elements (W, Se, Mo) and the number 2, not the compounds. The "W", "S", "M", and "2" characters are in the correct place on a QWERTY keyboard, and they appended the necessary additional characters to complete the symbols as needed, even if the "e" in Se and "o" in Mo aren't in the correct spot on the layout.
someone tries to explain cmos to the graphics dept
To an AI prompt more likely.
If the frame is made of atoms what are the keys and display made out of? Quarks?
Yupp, I stopped reading and closed the browser tab when I saw that. Then reconsidered, to find the original source.
AI but it's kinda cool. Computers books in the old days used to have crazy representations of computers and all kinds of stuff. I don't mind this one.