Nonsilicon Transistor

Intel has developed a new nonsilicon transistor that could potentially be faster and use less electricity than current chips. The new transistors are more economical and could be manufactured using existing facilities because they can be built directly on top of standard silicon wafers. Although the nonsilicon chips are still at least a decade away from widescale manufacturing, experts say they are one of the more promising options for replacing silicon in the coming years. Chipmakers are scrambling to find an alternative to silicon, and one option is using carbon nanotubes and another carbon material called graphine to replace silicon, while another option are compound semiconductors made from a combination of elements from the third and fifth columns of the periodic table. Compound semiconductors are an attractive alternative to silicon because electrons move through the compound material far more efficiently than through silicon, meaning compound transistors can work just as fast, or even faster, without requiring a larger voltage, critical to shrinking the size of transistors. However, compound semiconductors are difficult to grow on silicon, and are often incompatible with silicon because the atoms are spaced and do not layer well, which can lead to cracked crystals and defective transistors. Intel recently proposed a solution that creates compound semiconductors with indium gallium arsenide and indium aluminum arsenide. Some of the obstacles compound transistors face including shrinking transistor size, which is currently about 80 nanometers, to get a high transistor density.