Scientists find new semiconductor materials capable of surpassing silicon and stalling Moore’s Law

Moore’s Law will fail in the next two device generations, or Moore’s Law will remain in effect for the foreseeable future. Which occurs depends on a lot of factors, the most important of which is how emotionally attached anyone is to silicon. Silicon is a dead end. But if other semiconductors qualify for the continuance of Moore’s Law? That would be a different story — then Moore’s Law keeps going. At least for a little while.

Researchers at Stanford University recently determined that hafnium diselenide (HfSe2) and zirconium diselenide (ZrSe2) have properties that make them possible successors to silicon.

Silicon has many properties that make it incredibly useful, but only a few are of note for our purposes here. One is that silicon has a “native” insulator that is easy to create: silicon dioxide (some wags note that silicon works so well because it rusts). Another property is a bandgap of 1.1 eV permitting low-voltage operation at reduced leakage current.  Read more...

Reference: Electronic Products
                   Brian Santo