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The article is about zinc porphyrin, not graphene. Graphene is just used for the electrodes that connect to the transistor. Besides, it's kinda silly to say any

The article is about zinc porphyrin, not graphene. Graphene is just used for the electrodes that connect to the transistor. Besides, it's kinda silly to say anything will "always" be in the future. Tomorrow becomes yesterday faster than a lot of people care to admit.

elromulous 3y ago
I suspect they meant it will never come to fruition? Similar to e.g. cold fusion?
- pajko 3y ago
  There are graphene-related products in the market already: https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-products https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-products
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Several of those look like snake oil to me.
    - oskarkk 3y ago
      Yeah, like the $25 Chinese earphones mentioned there. Not convinced that they use cutting edge tech "which enables the F3 to faithfully reproduce music with a clean, rich, yet transparent high-fidelity sound".
- cwillu 3y ago
  Cold fusion was a fraud on the level of the recent room temperature superconductor. Impractical science is completely different from fraudulent science.
klyrs 3y ago
From the article: > Due to the size and design of the porphyrin molecule, and electronic behavior at the edges of the graphene electrodes, electrons don’t move through this single-molecule transistor like simple particles. The article is about a transistor comprised of a single zinc polyphorin molecule bridging two graphene electrodes. It isn't about one thing or another; your claim that graphene is "just" electrodes is a significant leap of logic. The destructive interference that makes everything work out may very well depend on the specific properties of monomolecular graphene. While I wouldn't say "never," this transistor technology will depend on a major revolution in semiconductor fabrication; the placement and alignment of graphene, and then zinc polyphorin, must be accurate down to the atomic level. Today, this is only possible with direct manipulation, taking perhaps hours of intensive work per transistor. Want a billion-transistor chip made out of this stuff? Don't bet on it this decade.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  For graphene, precise patterning without an individual manipulation is an almost solved problem. There was a research paper earlier this year where a new method of producing graphene has been demonstrated, which does not have any of the disadvantages of the previous methods. The new method is by converting a superficial layer of a standard silicon carbide monocrystalline wafer into graphene, by removing the silicon atoms. This allows the production and patterning of high-quality graphene by the methods of the integrated circuit industry. Only the placement and attachment of porphyrin molecules is a problem for which a solution would need to be found. It might be possible to find a coating non-reactive with porphyrin, in which to etch holes by standard photolithographic means, exposing the graphene electrodes to which the porphyrin must attach, then an immersion in a porphyrin solution might cause the molecules to attach in the desired places. While such a technology is many years away, it does not seem impossible and (having worked in semiconductor IC manufacturing) I do not believe that it would need over 10 years of development, though it is unlikely to happen in less than 5 years. The main factor that would determine whether such a technology would become viable is whether it would demonstrate a better potential for future evolution than the other alternatives that are explored currently for the certain replacement of the silicon in the highest-performance integrated circuits, during the next decade. If it will be shown to be promising enough, then enough resources will be provided to solve the technological difficulties.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    > The new method is by converting a superficial layer of a standard silicon carbide monocrystalline wafer into graphene, by removing the silicon atoms. This is cool! My understanding of chip fab rather weak, but it sounds like this only gets you transistors on a single substrate-adjacent layer. Is that not a significant limitation?
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      This is not a limitation, because it is the same for almost all other methods of making integrated circuits, where the transistors are also made inside a very thin superficial layer. Only now, for the next generations of CMOS manufacturing processes, there are some experimental technologies to make pairs of transistors that are stacked one over the other, to double the areal density of transistors. For now, the most significant problem for becoming able to make integrated circuits on graphene is to find methods to make better electrical contacts between the metal layers required for interconnections and the graphene transistors. The methods currently known introduce series resistances that are large, negating the intrinsic speed advantage of the graphene.

elromulous 3y ago

I suspect they meant it will never come to fruition? Similar to e.g. cold fusion?

pajko 3y ago
There are graphene-related products in the market already: https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-products https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-products
- klyrs 3y ago
  Several of those look like snake oil to me.
  - oskarkk 3y ago
    Yeah, like the $25 Chinese earphones mentioned there. Not convinced that they use cutting edge tech "which enables the F3 to faithfully reproduce music with a clean, rich, yet transparent high-fidelity sound".
cwillu 3y ago
Cold fusion was a fraud on the level of the recent room temperature superconductor. Impractical science is completely different from fraudulent science.

klyrs 3y ago

From the article: > Due to the size and design of the porphyrin molecule, and electronic behavior at the edges of the graphene electrodes, electrons don’t move through this single-molecule transistor like simple particles. The article is about a transistor comprised of a single zinc polyphorin molecule bridging two graphene electrodes. It isn't about one thing or another; your claim that graphene is "just" electrodes is a significant leap of logic. The destructive interference that makes everything work out may very well depend on the specific properties of monomolecular graphene. While I wouldn't say "never," this transistor technology will depend on a major revolution in semiconductor fabrication; the placement and alignment of graphene, and then zinc polyphorin, must be accurate down to the atomic level. Today, this is only possible with direct manipulation, taking perhaps hours of intensive work per transistor. Want a billion-transistor chip made out of this stuff? Don't bet on it this decade.

adrian_b 3y ago
For graphene, precise patterning without an individual manipulation is an almost solved problem. There was a research paper earlier this year where a new method of producing graphene has been demonstrated, which does not have any of the disadvantages of the previous methods. The new method is by converting a superficial layer of a standard silicon carbide monocrystalline wafer into graphene, by removing the silicon atoms. This allows the production and patterning of high-quality graphene by the methods of the integrated circuit industry. Only the placement and attachment of porphyrin molecules is a problem for which a solution would need to be found. It might be possible to find a coating non-reactive with porphyrin, in which to etch holes by standard photolithographic means, exposing the graphene electrodes to which the porphyrin must attach, then an immersion in a porphyrin solution might cause the molecules to attach in the desired places. While such a technology is many years away, it does not seem impossible and (having worked in semiconductor IC manufacturing) I do not believe that it would need over 10 years of development, though it is unlikely to happen in less than 5 years. The main factor that would determine whether such a technology would become viable is whether it would demonstrate a better potential for future evolution than the other alternatives that are explored currently for the certain replacement of the silicon in the highest-performance integrated circuits, during the next decade. If it will be shown to be promising enough, then enough resources will be provided to solve the technological difficulties.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > The new method is by converting a superficial layer of a standard silicon carbide monocrystalline wafer into graphene, by removing the silicon atoms. This is cool! My understanding of chip fab rather weak, but it sounds like this only gets you transistors on a single substrate-adjacent layer. Is that not a significant limitation?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    This is not a limitation, because it is the same for almost all other methods of making integrated circuits, where the transistors are also made inside a very thin superficial layer. Only now, for the next generations of CMOS manufacturing processes, there are some experimental technologies to make pairs of transistors that are stacked one over the other, to double the areal density of transistors. For now, the most significant problem for becoming able to make integrated circuits on graphene is to find methods to make better electrical contacts between the metal layers required for interconnections and the graphene transistors. The methods currently known introduce series resistances that are large, negating the intrinsic speed advantage of the graphene.