Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), the core R&D incubator for Samsung Electronics, has developed a new transistor structure utilizing graphene. Current semiconductors consist of billions of silicon transistors. To increase the performance of a semiconductor used today, you need to either reduce the size of individual transistors to shorten the traveling distance of electrons, or use a material with higher electron mobility which allows for faster electron velocity.
Graphene possesses electron mobility about 200 times higher then silicon, and a switch to this material could be an alternative path for making faster and more energy efficent devices as it allows faster electron velocity. An issue with using graphene is however that unlike the conventional semiconducting materials, current cannot be switched off because the material is semi-metallic. This has long been a key issue, preventing graphene transistors to be realized.
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