The material in question, called silicene, comes in layers of silicon just one-atom thick. This structure gives the material fantastic electrical properties, but it also means it’s devilishly tricky to produce and work with. Even testing its basic properties in the lab has proved difficult.
Now Deji Akinwande, a computer engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, has figured out how to work with the stubborn material well enough to make the first silicene transistors. His first-of-their-kind devices are described today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, and they live up to silicene’s promise by switching with extraordinary speed...
