Silicon is currently the predominant material in the semiconductor industry, although other semiconductors are also used for transistors, LEDs, etc. Many are the announcements of possible substitutes for silicon to further improve the chips, as the Si is reaching its ceiling. Faced with the limit of silicon, many have pointed to graphene as a material almost “magic” to replace it. For the moment, however, investment and development of Si-based technologies continue unabated.
Could that change soon? At the moment, no company has overcome the challenges and technical difficulties that graphene brings with it, including its manufacture. However, not long ago, some companies established the Graphene Copper Innovation Consortium, a consortium with the goal of developing new graphene-based chips that can replace silicon.
What is graphene?
Graphene is very similar to a pencil lead or a diamond, that is, it is made from carbon atoms. What varies is the way in which these atoms are arranged. While in the pencil lead they are disordered, in an amorphous form, and in the diamond they are arranged in a crystalline network, in graphene, they are forming a layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal mesh and one atom thick.
Its mechanical strength is about 200 times higher than that of steel, and its electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity are higher than those of copper, so they could consume less and dissipate heat better chips. And its weight per unit square meter is less than 1 mg, making it extremely light.
Advantages of graphene
If they succeed, they could make chips 10 times more powerful than today’s silicon chips while consuming less power. More than a decade ago, IBM showed a graphene wafer whose chips could reach frequencies of more than 100 GHz and, in theory, could reach up to 1000 GHz clock frequency. That’s far superior to what we see today in CPUs and GPUs based on Si technology.
The difficulties that exist
These chips could circumvent some of the complications facing the semiconductor industry in the near future. But, at the moment, companies have not been able to efficiently manufacture these chips. Therefore, they cannot be mass-produced for the time being.