"CHIPS: IBM Preps Carbon Transistors for Post-Silicon Era"

IBM Research demonstrated a carbon-based transistor technology that could make obsolete silicon-based CMOS chips over the next decade. Look for graphene semiconductors to begin taking over for silicon chips by the end of the decade. R.C.J.

The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors predicts that the silicon-based CMOS transistor technology used by microchips today will run out of steam by the end of the decade, but IBM Research (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) has a ready replacement already on the drawing board: carbon-based transistors. IBM paved the way for commercialization of carbon-based semiconductor chips with its dual-gate bi-layer graphene field-effect transistors.Unfortunately, graphene field-effect transistors (FETs) have dismal on-to-off current ratios that are hundreds of times smaller than silicon. The key to enhancing graphene's on-to-off ratios, according IBM, was its invention of a bi-layer construction method for graphene transistors.
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