University of Utah
materials science and engineering associate professor Ashutosh Tiwari
holds up a
substrate layered with a newly discovered 2-D material made of tin and oxygen.
Tiwari and his
team have discovered this new material, tin monoxide, which allows electrical
charges to move
through it much faster than common 3-D material such as silicon.
This breakthrough
in semiconductor material could lead to much faster computers and mobile
devices such as
smartphones that also run on less power and with less heat.
Credit: Dan
Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering
(February 15, 2016) Utah
engineers discover groundbreaking semiconducting material that could lead to
much faster electronics
University of Utah engineers have discovered a new kind of
2D semiconducting material for electronics that opens the door for much
speedier computers and smartphones that also consume a lot less power.
The semiconductor, made of the elements tin and oxygen, or
tin monoxide (SnO), is a layer of 2D material only one atom thick, allowing
electrical charges to move through it much faster than conventional 3D
materials such as silicon. This material could be used in transistors, the
lifeblood of all electronic devices such as computer processors and graphics
processors in desktop computers and mobile devices. The material was discovered
by a team led by University of Utah materials science and engineering associate
professor Ashutosh Tiwari. A paper describing the research was published online
Monday, Feb. 15, in the journal, Advanced Electronic Materials. The paper,
which also will be the cover story on the printed version of the journal, was
co-authored by University of Utah materials science and engineering doctoral
students K. J. Saji and Kun Tian, and Michael Snure of the Wright-Patterson Air
Force Research Lab near Dayton, Ohio.
Transistors and other components used in electronic devices
are currently made of 3D materials such as silicon and consist of multiple
layers on a glass substrate. But the downside to 3D materials is that electrons
bounce around inside the layers in all directions.
The benefit of 2D materials, which is an exciting new
research field that has opened up only about five years ago, is that the
material is made of one layer the thickness of just one or two atoms.
Consequently, the electrons “can only move in one layer so it’s much faster,”
says Tiwari.