Silicon has been the dominant material in electronic device manufacturing for some time. However, the material’s somewhat specialized production processes have led researchers to experiment with previously cost-prohibitive materials like gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and lithium fluoride.
The new, more exotic material investigations were first created as MIT engineers attempted to develop a technique to fabricate ultrathin semiconducting films. This new technique reportedly provides a more cost-effective way of fabricating flexible electronics made from any combination of semiconducting elements.
The team started stacking graphene on top of a more expensive wafer of semiconducting material, like gallium arsenide. Atoms of gallium and arsenide were then poured over the stack and found that the atoms were able to interact with the underlying layer as if the graphen layer was not present. The end result was that the atoms assembled into the precise, single-crystalline pattern of the underlying semiconducting wafer.
The technique has been dubbed remote epitaxy and could revolutionize the production of semiconductors, and all the electronic devices that use them. From a cost perspective, the process could drive costs down significantly – for both the manufacturer and consumer.
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