Graphene is one of the materials that has attracted great interest since its discovery 14 years ago. It’s resistance to high temperatures and its great capacity to conduct electric current, make it an element of research mainly in the technology industry.
It is precisely this property that has so far made it difficult to apply this material in the manufacture of components such as transistors because it is impossible to “stop” the current transmission of graphene. However, this is about to change, as a group of scientists have discovered a way for graphene to act with an insulating range similar to silicon.
According to ExtremeTech, a group of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS) of the University of Santiago de Compostela and the International Physics Centre of Donostia (DIPC)…, published a study in which they talk about a method for manufacturing a graphite membrane, with pores whose size, shape and density can be adjusted with atomic precision. This will allow a band or range similar to that of semiconductors such as silicon to be incorporated to block the transmission of electrical current when it moves away from the established parameters.
“What we show in our work is that it is possible to make a’material’ like graphene, but with a very similar gap to silicon,” said Aitor Mugarza, research professor and group leader at ICN2.
“Also, by simply modifying the width of the graphite strips between the pores (the number of carbon atoms), this bandwidth can be controlled. The manufacturing method is relatively simple and easily extendable to large-scale production.” He added.
Silicon has an energy range where it does not conduct electricity. Graphite, in its pure form, is not. That is, it cannot be switched on and off like silicon transistors right now. While some methods have been found to produce an isolated strip of graphene, none of them has been suitable for mass production.
A vital component of this research is that advances were driven by bottom-up construction rather than top-down methods, allowing the team to reach scales of up to 1 nm with this manufacturing process.
This discovery would multiply the power of the processors made from this material, although there is still a long way to go to see graphite chips and transistors.
If you want to know more about this discovery we leave you the video with the construction process:
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