Stanford chemists have developed a new way to make transistors out of carbon nanoribbons. The devices could be integrated into high-performance computer chips to increase their speed and generate less heat, which can damage today’s silicon-based chips when transistors are packed together tightly.

For the first time, a research team led by Hongjie Dai, the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, has made transistors called “field-effect transistors” with graphene that can operate at room temperature. Graphene is a form of carbon derived from graphite.

Other graphene transistors, made with wider nanoribbons or thin films, require much lower temperatures.

Source: Physorg

A team of scientists has developed silicon-based circuits that can be stretched or bent to a radius of curvature as small as 85µm without compromising their electronic properties.

John A. Rodgers, a materials science professor at the University of Illinois, first developed wavy silicon nanoribbons that could stretch and flex in 2005. Since then Rodgers and his team have taken the idea and applied it to an entire circuit.

Rogers explained: “The core underlying concept is similar, but the implementation is orders of magnitude beyond what we did previously. I think the way that we’re doing things now is applicable to electronic systems of arbitrary levels of complexity.”

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