▲ 2 r/ECE
I’ve been looking into alternatives to silicon for semiconductor devices, particularly carbon-based materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes. From what I understand, they offer very high carrier mobility, excellent thermal conductivity, and saw on stanford advanced material that they have potential for scaling beyond what traditional silicon CMOS can handle.
Given these advantages, I’m curious what the main barriers are from an electrical/computer engineering perspective. For example:
- Is the lack of a natural bandgap in graphene still the biggest issue for digital logic?
- How significant are fabrication and reproducibility challenges (e.g., chirality control in CNTs)?
- Are there integration problems with existing CMOS processes and fabrication infrastructure?
- From an industry standpoint, is it mainly cost and inertia, or are there fundamental device limitations?
Are there any current applications where carbon-based semiconductors are actually competitive or in production, or is silicon (and maybe SiC/GaN) still expected to dominate for the foreseeable future?
u/JackfruitPale1748 — 22 days ago