New One-Atom-Thick Material Silicene Could Create Ultra-Fast Computers

Have you ever heard of silicene? It could mean a whole new era for computer electronics. The world's thinnest silicone material holes the promise of developing dramatically faster, smaller and more efficient computer chips.

Silicene is made out of a one-atom-thick layer of silicone atoms, and has outstanding electrical properties. Until now, though, the material has been difficult to produce and work with. But this latest study has solved some of those issues.

Until a few years ago, human-made silicone was a theoretical material. Yet scientists looked at carbon-based graphene, another atom-thick material, and speculated that silicon atoms could be structured in a broadly similar way. Unfortunately, silicone is instable when exposed to air.

In order to overcome these issues, the researchers developed a new method for fabricating silicone that reduces its exposure to air. The researchers let a hot vapor of silicon atoms condense onto a crystalline block of silver in a vacuum chamber. Then, they formed a silicene sheet on a thin layer silver and added a nanometer-thick layer of alumina on top. With these protective layers, the silicene could be safely peeled from its base and transferred to an oxidized-silicon substrate.

"Apart from introducing a new player in the playground of 2D materials, silicene, with its close affinity to silicon, suggests an opportunity in the road map of the semiconductor industry," said Deji Akinwande, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The major breakthrough here is the efficient low-temperature manufacturing and fabrication of silicene devices for the first time."

Currently, the researchers are still investigating the new structures and new methods for creating silicene. This, in turn, could eventually lead to low-energy, high-speed digital computer chips.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

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