Fabrication of microchips from molybdenum materials

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, have developed a microchip Molybdenum material , which is more dominant than silicon, is characterized by: more compact, less power consumption and more flexible (mechanically).

"MoS ₂ molybdenum disulphide is still relatively abundant in nature," the researchers said.

"We built an initial prototype, placed 2 - 6 transistors in succession, and found that the operation of the binary logic gate is basically pretty good, which proves that we have This can make a bigger chip , " said Andras Kis, director of the nanoscale electronics and structural laboratory (LANES).

The structure and semiconductor properties of molybdenum disulphide MoS ₂ (which can compete with silicon, the most commonly used material in electronic components), has made the material ideal (molybdenum) used in transistors.

"The main advantage of molybdenum disulphide mos ₂ is: let us continue to shrink the size of transistors," said Kis.

It is not possible to make silicon layers less than 2 nm thick at present, as the risk of forming a chemical reaction will oxidize the surfaces and alter the electronic properties of silicon.

However, we can make micro-chips (1nm) 3 times smaller, with molybdenum material (only 3 atomic thickness). At this scale, the material is still very stable and very easy to control the conductivity.

Electronic signal amplification of molybdenum material (comparable to silicon): with an output electronic signal (amplified) four times stronger than an electronic input signal. This shows great potential in creating more sophisticated microchips.

While with graphene material: the amplitude is just 1. Under this threshold, the output voltage will not be enough to operate a second microchip, " said Andras Kis.