Scientists build world’s first silicene transistor

Nicknamed ‘graphene’s cousin’, silicene - a form of silicon made from a

two-dimensional lattice structure of silicon atoms - has been touted as a

super-material in its own right, and now, computer engineers in the US have

managed to make a transistor out of this notoriously tricky material.

This feat, achieved by computer engineer Deji Akinwande from the University

of Texas and his team, has proven for the first time that silicene can be

stabilised and sandwiched into a functioning transistor device - something

no one thought would even be possible.

Scientists have theorised about the existence of silicene for over two

decades, but it wasn’t until 2010 that anyone was actually able to make it .

This was an exciting development, because like graphene, it’s got some

amazing electrical properties that could revolutionise computing technology

- for example, it allows electrons to zoom through it as if they had no mass,

and this unencumbered movement means the potential for extraordinarily

speedy circuits running through our computer chips.  For the first time, a new, one-atom-thick form of

silicon has been used to build a transistor, in what could be the first step

towards computer chips that run thousands of times faster than anything

we have now.