03/02/2012

Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester have made another breakthrough with the material graphene.

The super-conductor was discovered by the duo in 2004 - for which they were awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize - and has huge potential as a replacement for silicon as the chief component of computer chips.

However, the material conducts too well and would cause chips to melt within a fraction of a second.

This problem has baffled scientists ever since graphene's discovery, but the Manchester team now thinks it has made another breakthrough.

The team now suggests using graphene not laterally – as had been attempted – but in the vertical direction.

They have now created a new device called a vertical field-effect tunnelling transistor.

Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, a member of the team, said:  "We have proved a conceptually new approach to graphene electronics.  Our transistors already work pretty well. I believe they can be improved much further, scaled down to nanometre sizes and work at sub-THz frequencies."