Carbon nanosheets promise super-fast chips - tech - 08 January 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Carbon nanosheets promise super-fast chips - tech - 08 January 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Atom-thick sheets of a carbon compound called graphene should smash the record for room-temperature conductivity, say UK researchers.

The fact that the near-2D layers lets electrons travel so freely means the sheets could allow a new generation of super-fast microelectronics, they say.

Prototype devices like transistors have already been made from graphene, but its basic properties are still being explored.

Graphene is the name given to a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon pattern. Stacks of such sheets make the pencil-core ingredient graphite, but until recently it had been extremely difficult to isolate single layers.

The new research was carried out by scientists at the University of Manchester – where graphene was first isolated in 2004 – and colleagues from Russia, the Netherlands, and the US.

The team calculated that pure graphene should allow electrons to travel more easily than in any other material, including gold, silicon, gallium arsenide, and carbon nanotubes.

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