The fastest semiconductor ever could dramatically speed up computer chips

Thanks to the common silicon semiconductors used to make computer chips today, electrons flow from A to B and are widely spread out in the process. This creates useless heat and slows down goal achievement. It is no wonder that solutions are being sought to eliminate these two defects.

A team led by Milan Delor from Columbia University in New York, USA, claims to have found such a solution. They present a material with the chemical formula Re6Se8Cl2 that allows molecules to move from A to B a factor of 100 to 1,000 faster than the electrons in a silicon chip can.

Delor semiconductor consists of rhenium, selenium and chlorine. Researchers call the substance supraatomic because the atoms in it form clusters, but in some ways they still behave like the original elements.

Particles, called excitons, move more slowly in this material than electrons in silicon, but they are not scattered. This means that it goes from point A to point B in a straight line, making it much faster than its silicon counterparts.

“If you think about a gigahertz processor, you could currently have hundreds of gigahertz or maybe terahertz in terms of transistor switching speed [mit dem neuen Material] “We get a huge increase in performance,” says Delors.

However, as disappointing as this is in success, a working computer chip using this material is still “several decades” away, according to Delors. There are other disadvantages.

Rhenium is one of the rarest elements found in the Earth’s crust, while silicon is the second most common. Even if they succeed, chips made from Re6Se8Cl2 are more likely to be suitable for specialized applications than the computer in the study. Anyone interested in studying New York can find it in Science magazine Sciences Read slowly.