Another one of those slow improvments that add up...

http://www.physorg.com/news173340834.html

 

http://www.physorg.com/news173881546.html

 

Next generation Graphine Devices.

http://www.physorg.com/news183395407.html

 

Carbon Based Chips May One Day Replace Silicon Transistors

http://www.physorg.com/news184420861.html

European researchers make breakthrough in developing super-material graphene

http://www.physorg.com/news183135827.html

 

Thanks for these updates. They are very interesting. You are gradually getting me more and more interested in this area.

I was doing some searching on this topic and ran across the following paper. It shows the results for graphene FETs grown on silicon carbide.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0908/0908.0017.pdf

 

It's not often you can see a technology evolving like this. No major breakthroughs, just a steady set of gradual improvements.

There are hints that some forms of graphene may be superconducting, which is more good news if true.

 

http://www.physorg.com/news90170453.html

http://www.physorg.com/news184604483.html

http://www.physorg.com/news192786026.html

 

Thats plain amazing. I have been waiting for you to update us on the graphene happenings.

So they manufactured a FET. I cant wait to read the preliminary data sheets or benchmarks.

100GHz. wow. I cant wait to see the voltage levels, saturation, and current capability.

must be in the nV and nA range.

Thing is, if you drop it on the carpet, you are NEVER gonna find it.

 

Nano tech is finally surfacing to be real.

 

On a totally different subject, google memistors. This device is coming along nicely, and may make a lot more than graphite obsolete. Capable of 3D architecture, 100Gb in a 1CM square, non volatile high speed memory. The is some speculation it would be good for computation too. It was invented by HP.

 

Well check this out Bill:

Researchers at Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea have come up with a way to capture power when a touch screen flexes under a user's touch. Touch-screen computing is all the rage, appearing in countless smart phones, laptops, and tablet computers.

The researchers have integrated flexible, transparent electrodes with an energy-scavenging material to make a film that could provide supplementary power for portable electronics. The screens take advantage of the piezoelectric effect--the tendency of some materials to generate an electrical potential when they're mechanically stressed. Samsung's experimental device sandwiches piezoelectric nanorods between highly conductive graphene electrodes on top of flexible plastic sheets. The group's aim is to replace the rigid and power-consuming electrodes and sensors used on the front of today's touch-screen displays with a flexible touch-sensor system that powers itself. Ultimately, this setup might generate enough power to help run the display and other parts of the device functions. Rolling up such a screen, for instance, could help recharge its batteries.

"The flexibility and rollability of the nano-generators gives us unique application areas such as wireless power sources for future foldable, stretchable, and wearable electronics systems," says Sang-Woo Kim, professor of materials science and engineering at Sungkyunkwan University. Kim led the research with Jae-Young Choi, a researcher at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

 

Engineers achieve world record with high-speed graphene transistors

 

Wow Bill. Some Nobels Prizes come faster than others.

Today, two University of Manchester scientists were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their pioneering research on graphene, a one-atom-thick film of carbon whose strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity have opened up new horizons for pure physics research as well as high-tech applications.

It’s a worthy Nobel, for the simple reason that graphene may be one of the most promising and versatile materials ever discovered. It could hold the key to everything from supersmall computers to high-capacity batteries.​

Graphene’s properties are attractive to materials scientists and electrical engineers for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it might be possible to build circuits that are smaller and faster than what you can build in silicon. But first: What is it, exactly?​

Imagine “crystals one atom or molecule thick, essentially two-dimensional planes of atoms shaved from conventional crystals,” said Nobel-winner Andre Geim, in New Scientist. “Graphene is stronger and stiffer than diamond, yet can be stretched by a quarter of its length, like rubber. Its surface area is the largest known for its weight.”​

Geim and his colleague (and former postdoctoral assistant) Konstantin Novoselov first produced graphene in 2004 by repeatedly peeling away graphite strips with adhesive tape to isolate a single atomic plane. They analyzed its strength, transparency, and conductive properties in a paper for Science the same year. ​

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/graphene/#ixzz11WbAVYZY​

 

More weirdness:

http://www.physorg.com/news205090265.html

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-noise-graphene.html

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-nobel-prize-big-graphene.html

Near as I can figure, some of this is some of the press discovering graphene for the first time.

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25914/

Mass Can Be 'Created' Inside Graphene, Say Physicists

The amazing properties of graphene now include the ability to create mass, according to a new prediction.

 

If I can ever find it again it reminded me of an article I read where a singularity was simulated by cultivated flaws in a graphene sheet. Not the real thing of course, but some side effects. I'll post it if it ever comes up.

One of the odder concepts I've run into is Programmable Matter, especially as it applies to quantum wells.

Quantum wells

Quantum wells can hold one or more electrons. Those electrons behave like artificial atoms which, like real atoms, can form covalent bonds, but these are extremely weak. Because of their larger sizes, other properties are also widely different.

Something like this would make a unique substrate, though some power is required. I originally ran into the concept in the magazine "Analog".

 

Extending Moore's Law: Expitaxial graphene shows promise for replacing silicon in electronics

 

I love how each time we get a new fashionable material fall out of the universities the press tells us how the end of silicon is nigh and to move over this new fangled material is the holy grail of the new electronics age. Years later, little changes.

Forgive my cynicism of what these things may be to our field. Something will give sooner rather than later.

Dave

 

I suspect if we had superconductors, high speed electronics using graphene, and 7 other gee whiz inventions silicon would still be king. It is cheap, abundant, and a well established technology.

It is so well established that they've made micro machines out of it, because we know how to work the material on that scale.

 

I would have to agree.

We cant even work with silicon down to the sizes that are possible with them on a reliable large scale manufacturing setup.

There are still masking errors, and etching problems with the sizes we are at now.

So, working at the sub-nanometer will require new optics and new technology.
Or at least refinement of current technology.