Researchers Quest After an Amazingly Fast Semiconductor

Is it possible that an 81-year-old dream of a Nobel laureate may finally become a reality?

Qmed Staff

An international research team thinks it may have hit on a way to place crystalline lattices of pure electrons in the bottom of a silicon-encased quantum well, according to a report in Qmed's sister UBM publication EE Times.

The resulting crystal electron "gas" would have electron mobility more than 200 times greater than graphene and more than 1700 times greater than crystalline silicon, professor Sergey Kravchenko at Northeastern University told EE Times. Such a material would fulfill theoretical predictions Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner made in 1934.

"We are not ready for apps-- only the basic science. We are looking for the quantum Wigner crystal predicted theoretically in 1934 and sought forever after. With these new samples, we should be able to answer the question 'yes or no,'" Kravchenko said.

Read the full EE Times story here.

Researchers in the project also hail from the National Taiwan University and the Institute of Solid-State Physics (Moscow).

Kravchenko believes that if his team's results are confirmed, the ultra-high-electron mobility of the electron crystals will attract semiconductor researchers to figure out how to make use of them.

If the experience so far with graphene is any indication, Kravchenko might be right. Since its discovery in 2004, researchers have heavily focused on graphene as a potential wonder material for a host of applications, including flexible electronics in the medical device space. 

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

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