[HN Gopher] Graphene 'Nano-Origami' Could Take Us Past the End o...
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Graphene 'Nano-Origami' Could Take Us Past the End of Moore's Law
Author : squid_demon
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-03-03 06:40 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (singularityhub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (singularityhub.com)
| [deleted]
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Isn't it astounding that we used to get by without graphene?
| drannex wrote:
| As with anything that has to do with Graphene: Fantastic, happy
| to hear, but let's see how it goes with more testing and if it's
| manufacturable. I haven't seen a successful long-term application
| yet and they've been talking about graphene for twenty years.
|
| I'm sure great things are happening in the field, and many
| wonderful ideas and discoveries have been made -- but statements
| such as "take us past Moores law" requires manufacturing, and I
| haven't seen anything to say that this is possible albeit I am
| ever hopeful for the day that it is.
| dekhn wrote:
| This applies to fusion, genomics for precision med, and quantum
| computing as well. Hopeful to see a successful outcome, tired
| of 20+ years of unrealistic claims.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I just think people are too much in a hurry with results. With
| these things, the lag between discovery to commercial viability
| is decades, not months...
| junon wrote:
| That's not really the argument though. I would wager GP is
| more lamenting the writing style and "hype" surrounding
| certain tech, which causes widespread misinformation in the
| longer term, instead of reporting accurately and keeping
| scientific literature concise and accurate.
| skc wrote:
| It's also very unnecessary. I always wonder who the
| intended audience of this sort of reporting on scientific
| breakthroughs is.
| junon wrote:
| Followers of r/futurology, for one.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Anyone who will click on or share the article?
| yortpyperty wrote:
| Agreed, it's the quick growth mentality that doesn't apply to
| things like fundamental science.
| Zenst wrote:
| Agreed and flying cars taught me this over several decades,
| as they have many others if they think about it. The valley
| between in the lab/prototype and commercial viable/practical
| is long and wide in some science.
| piokoch wrote:
| Graphene manufacturing was not needed as our best ~5nm chips
| could use copper wires to transfer electricity. I suppose the
| ones that are on R&D now (3, maybe 2 nm) also use copper
| (that's my guess only). But going smaller will require
| something better (meaning less resistant on such scale), so
| maybe Graphene will be back in the game.
| ben_w wrote:
| At that scale, is it even useful to still call it "graphene"?
| 3nm is only 21 carbon atom diameters. How much of its
| desirable properties come from bulk effects? (Genuinely
| curious, I'm not qualified in chemistry).
| rsfern wrote:
| It's probably workable in terms of material properties if
| you can manufacture it in the geometry needed, but I'm not
| an expert in 2d materials.
|
| The edge of a graphene sheet is a defect that affects the
| electronic properties, with strong orientation dependence
|
| However, in this article they intentionally introduce
| additional defects to tune the electronic properties, so
| there's probably no fundamental issue. I agree with another
| poster here that manufacturing at scale in integrated
| devices is not obviously viable. Especially because it
| seems like a different method of introducing defects is
| needed if you want to grow the graphene by chemical vapor
| deposition.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene_nanoribbon
| wcrossbow wrote:
| Narrow and long strips of graphene are called nanoribbons
| in the literature. When they start to get really narrow
| their properties change significantly [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10177
|
| Edit: spelling
| [deleted]
| MayeulC wrote:
| > our best ~5nm chips could use copper wires to transfer
| electricity
|
| I thought Aluminium and titanium were used in the lower
| interconnect layers, but according to [1] you are right.
|
| The tech mentioned in the article is supposedly useful for
| transistors, not necessarily interconnect though. I guess
| that would be useful for going beyond planar processes. But
| at some point our current architectures are already severely
| limited regarding TDP anyway, so unless you can afford using
| only 10% of your chips, an architecture revolution is overdue
| IMO.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnect_(integrated_ci
| rcu...
| vimacs2 wrote:
| I keep hearing this sentiment but it's simply not true. They
| are already using graphene in consumer battery tech and with
| the recent invention of the "flash graphene" manufacturing
| process, production is going to ramp up significantly.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I'm glad it's only about 1000x faster, if it were millions or
| billions of times faster it could be disruptive in a world
| destabilizing way.
| mehphp wrote:
| I'm assuming because it would able to break current
| cryptography?
| emkoemko wrote:
| then just make the cryptography 10000x harder then now? no?
| cutler wrote:
| The great Graphene Promise recycled.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Isn't the more tangible problem the end of Dennard scaling?
|
| As in: Moore's law is still giving you more transistors, but you
| can't actually turn them all on, and they aren't getting faster,
| so no free lunch.
|
| (Which of course is why the Apple M1 is so significantly ahead,
| at least of Intel)
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