Quantum Times

IBM Scientists Demonstrate World's Fastest Graphene Transistor

A glimpse of the post-silicon age; how does Graphene Valley sound to you? Silicon Valley may want to update its name, because IBM has created graphene transistors that blow away the silicon competition. The transistor prototypes were made from sheets of carbon just one atom thick that could switch on and off at 100 billion times per second. The 100-gigahertz speed is about 10 times faster than any silicon equivalents, Technology Review reports. The transistor creation is supposedly compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing, and so experts anticipate a scaling-up process that could put transistors into high-performance imaging devices, radar and communication gadgets within the next few years. Graphene-based computer processors might take another decade at least. Graphene is one of the likeliest materials to replace silicon in computer processing, because electrons travel through graphene much faster. But researchers had previously made graphene transistors via time-consuming methods, such as flakin

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