Single-Atom Layer of Tin May Be a New Wonder Conductor 126
At Kurzweil AI, an article proclaims that the next wonder material for computer chips may be an unexpectedly common one:
"Move over, graphene. 'Stanene' — a single layer of tin atoms — could be the world’s first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computer chips operate, according to a team of theoretical physicists led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University." (Original paper is available here, but paywalled.)
100 percent efficiency? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems unlikely. Something about complimentary midday meals...
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
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Luckily, what you refer to as Tin foil is actually aluminum these days. nothing to worry about dear sir.
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I built my tin foil hat out of actual tin that I myself mined and produced, you insensitive clod!
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I believe if your machines can put down a single-atom zinc layer, Running them under pure nitrogen is a tiny cost increment.
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Until the tin oxides/corrodes. What are they going to coat the tin with, to prevent that? (And can they put that protective coating on faster than oxygen can get at the single-atom layer of tin?)
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(And can they put that protective coating on faster than oxygen can get at the single-atom layer of tin?)
Depending on the deposition process, they probably already are removing the oxygen either by substituting an inert atmosphere or working in a vacuum. How would they get it down in the first place otherwise?
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Re: Great... (Score:2)
http://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/ [archive.org]
now?
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I swear, next they will try to make slightly cheaper TP by punching holes in 1/2 ply.
Re:100 percent efficiency? (Score:5, Informative)
Well if we are talking about power transmissions then superconductors are 100% efficient. Nil resistive losses. You still have capacitive and inductive losses you cant get rid of when dealing with AC or DC ramp up, ramp down. You also have external costs like keeping the superconductor cooled, but that is system efficiency, not semiconductor efficiency, that is cooling cost is not dependent on power transmitted. So if you are looking at time invariant current and exclude cooling costs then superconductors are 100% efficient in current transmission.
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If you don't have resistance, any capacitive or inductive effects will be 100% efficient, no?. The whole problem with induction and capacitance in transmission lines is it increases the overall power loss due to unused current flowing through resistive lines. Superconductivity eliminates that source of loss.
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No. Dielectric polarization losses in capacitors and hysteresis and eddy current losses in inductors will still exist when superconductors are used. In high voltage high voltage power transmission lines, corona discharge losses will still exist.
Re:100 percent efficiency? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a problem, in the small print they've defined % as 999900 ppm
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So that'd actually be 99.99% efficient.
Still not that bad, though.
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Nope, it's 1 000 000 / 999 900 == 0.999 900, which, when expressed as a percentage is 99.99%.
Re:100 percent efficiency? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:100 percent efficiency? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: 100 percent efficiency? (Score:2)
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Oh Sn-ap!
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Trust nothing. This is just a secret government ploy to lower the supplies for mind control protective headgear.
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if($string = "100 percent efficiency"){
printf("Bullshit!");
}
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Somehow i also doubt the claim "replacement for silicon", silicon is not used in IC-s for its conductivity properties, au contraire, its used because it can be doped to become a N or P semiconductor. Interconnects in IC-s are made with plain old aluminum and copper and interconnects are really not the point where power is consumed. Lion share of power in FET based logic is used charging and discharging transistor gates, that is the losses are capacitive, you can reduce the losses by making smaller transisto
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
the losses are capacitive, you can reduce the losses by making smaller transistors but you really cant affect it by material selection
Yeah, the reason why material selection doesn't matter in capacitors is precisely why many of them are being manufactured using the fairly rare element named tantalum. It's just for the fun of it. ;-) Perhaps you're right about the interconnect material selection but there's a lot of material selection going on in modern ICs beyond that.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is right and proper to have doubts about new announcements like this. That is the basis of science - the idea of "replicate, then trust, but verify" at the core of scientific approaches. If this turns out to be either an error, a late April-fools joke, a scam, a one-off result that cannot be replicated, or a valid result within a small range of constraints, then it will be labelled as such.
However, if subsequent independent experiments show a robust and consistent process that can be replicated easily, then I for one will welcome our new (1 atom-thick) tinfoil hat-wearing overlords...
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However, if subsequent independent experiments show a robust and consistent process that can be replicated easily, then I for one will welcome our new (1 atom-thick) tinfoil hat-wearing overlords...
In the article the PI is quoted saying "if our prediction is confirmed by experiments that are underway in several laboratories around the world", so you might not have to wait too long (in science terms anyway) to roll out the welcoming party.
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Usually science in this sort of parers is valid. Just that journalists "translate" it to load of crap and attach applications to the science that were never part of the original paper.
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Actually, not quite. I see this has been published in Physical Review Letters (PRL). PRL is an incredibly high profile publication in physics. The latest and greatest research is published there. You see a lot of extraordinary results published first in PRL, as it's a high-rate publication journal. It's meant to get new and exciting developments in the field out quickly. Unfortunately, that means in that race often the results are preliminary. I thought I remembered hearing that about half of the pap
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"Trust" and "verify" are contradictory. It's fine that you want to verify, but don't pretend that you are trusting while you actively violate the concept of trust.
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After reading your post, I was quite sure there were no spelling errors. I trusted that there are none, but I verified it to be sure. What's exactly contradictory there?
Since it is not logically possible to be always correct, once in a while something you trust will actually turn out wrong. As this is the case, it is very beneficial to verify things once in a while even if you trust them.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzzzt! wrong. If I trust you, I will verify your work. If I don't trust you, I won't even bother to look at it.
Trust is about honesty, not about infallibility.
Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't really trust anything you haven't personally verified yourself, you can't get very far in real life. Have you verified every line of code that runs on your computer or do you trust it enough to run it anyway? What about the compiler? Do you ever use results from your coworkers without digging through every calculation down to every assumption and verify them? Trust is a measure of confidence in your word, which is weighed against how important it is. If you have no confidence in it, you don't want to waste any time on it (assume false, test false). If you have a bit of confidence that it's might be worthwhile you verify it. (assume false, test true). If you think it's probably right, but you want to verify it that's stronger (assume true, test true). And if you trust it implicitly that's of course trust (assume true, test false).
Re:really? (Score:4, Insightful)
In day-to-day life you have to trust almost everything to get anything done, but the GP was talking in particular about trusting new scientific results. Even then if several independent scientists have verified it I can trust it without verifying it myself, but trusting an initial scientific finding that no one else has verified is just foolish, no matter how smart and established the original scientist is. There are different levels and meanings to the word "trust", and as GP pointed out there has to be a certain level of trust for anyone to even bother to try verifying or debunking a result (because there are far too many crackpots out there to deal with them all).
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"Trust but verify" is a Russian proverb popularized by Ronald Reagan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify
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Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
Room temperature superconductor? Really? I doubt somehow.
The article talks about very low power transmissions. At one atom layer thick you could however possibly layer stanene and an appropriate insulator to achieve higher currents. This is in line with what has been observed in the material layering in high-temp superconductors.
They used the Vienna suite for simulation. I have yet to find their experimental observations in the paper.
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That's something worth posting under a pseudonym. Don't be shy.
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well it implies a room temperature superconductor which itself doesn't really imply a perpetual machine but it does imply infinite power storage.
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Not infinite. Superconductors have no resistance, but they still have a limited maximum current, above which they do have resistance (which is very bad, and what causes superconducting magnets to quench).
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quench
That always sounds like a sexual fetish to me.
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Hey, even physicists get some once in a while.
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It's an expensive way to asphyxiate though.
There are no Infinities Here (Score:2, Interesting)
No. Superconductors of any critical temperature don't imply infinite power storage. They need to be cooled more and more as they are subjected to larger and larger magnetic fields (generated by the circulating current that they contain). The nominal critical temperature is for when they store zero current. Even if you could keep a superconductor at exactly zero degrees, it would still only store a finite amount of energy.
Anyway, this isn't about superconductors; its a totally different phenomena called the
Re:I call bull (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such thing as conducting electricity at 100 percent efficiency. Think about it... it implies perpetual machines, and I believe there's some evidence against the possibility of such a thing :D
You are wrong.
The evidence against perpetual machines are only for machines with a higher than 100 percent efficiency, not machines that approaches 100 percent efficiency. You can have a wheel in space that spins perpetually, you cannot extract energy from it without slowing it down.
Also, as far as I know the 'proof' is based on a statistical observation of how energy works with a macroscopic number of particles.
While it is highly unlikely that anyone can build an energy creator by working on a subatomic level I don't think that there is any hard evidence that proves this impossible. To get that proof one would probably have to explain why matter and energy exists at all and why it can't happen again.
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"Wanna get high?" -- Towelie
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Think about it... it implies perpetual machines, and I believe there's some evidence against the possibility of such a thing :D
You haven't met my 5 year old son.
Re:I call bull (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I call bull (Score:2)
Part of that "state" is position, so no it doesn't.
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No it can be 100% efficient within the system. By the first law of thermodynamics this is completely possible. In order to GET that energy into the system some must be removed from another system, but as long as it just stays on the "stanene" then it is implied to remain as electrical energy and not turn into heat/radiation/whatever.
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Superconductors are a verifiable fact. An object moving in a vacuum also exhibits perpetual motion. And there is no law of physics that prohibits perpetual motion, as long as no energy is being removed from the system. Claims to perpetual motion machines are scams because they involve drawing infinite free energy from the machines (violating the first law of thermodynamics, conversation of energy) or converting heat to useful work (violating the second law of thermodynamics, entropy).
It's all simulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
At least as far as I can tell without access to the paywalled concept.
Important questions would be:
What is the maximum current that can be transported through strips of various widths?
How sensitive to defects is the process?
Tin is going to be a major problem for much semiconductor processing - as it means you basically now can't solder the chip, or do any even 'low' temperature processing after it's deposited - it has to be the last layer.
Re:It's all simulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the maximum current that can be transported through strips of various widths?
Other questions:
1. If a sheet of 1 atom thickness can transport x A/m at no loss, (ampere per meter of sheet), then how close can you stack these sheets together before x becomes significantly less?
2. If there is a (mutual) magnetic interference between two layers that destroys the superconducting effect, then will the superconductor actually work when immersed in an external magnetic field?
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Other questions:
1. If a sheet of 1 atom thickness can transport x A/m at no loss, (ampere per meter of sheet), then how close can you stack these sheets together before x becomes significantly less?
And the related question of whether the change is dramatic enough that it can be used for active devices. Hmmmm ...
Note that this is much less of an issue for power distribution on-chip because stacking layers can dramatically reduce field strength by coupling currents in opposite directions (and incidentally create bypass capacitance, of which there is never enough.)
2. If there is a (mutual) magnetic interference between two layers that destroys the superconducting effect, then will the superconductor actually work when immersed in an external magnetic field?
Unless the critical field is really low, which seems unlikely at room temperature, this isn't going to be a problem for anyone not building
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I'm no materials engineer/scientist, but I would think some of this could be overcome simply by width and orientation of the tin strips. Considering that TFA stated that this is only conducting on the edges of the "stanene" you could probably somewhat pyramid the tin layers with some type of insulator between them and the resulting magnetic field size could be accounted for at each layer such that they don't interfere with each other. Also by just making sure major strips were run perpendicular to each ot
Re:It's all simulations! (Score:5, Informative)
What is the maximum current that can be transported through strips of various widths?
Mostly moot. The really nasty consequence of conductive losses in semiconductors is that it degrades signals traveling across the chip. We insert buffers along the route to restore signal amplitude and reduce delays (those RC delays are ugly). This would zero the resistance and reduce the capacitance, which is a big deal. Also, for reliability reasons, we'd probably build laminates with multiple layers separated by dielectrics.
How sensitive to defects is the process?
Depends on the width of the path. The usual solution is to add redundancy, multiple single-atom layers separated by dielectric. Vertical space on chips is relatively cheap, as long as you don't need to use extra mask layers or move the material from one process stage to another.
Tin is going to be a major problem for much semiconductor processing - as it means you basically now can't solder the chip, or do any even 'low' temperature processing after it's deposited - it has to be the last layer.
We don't solder the devices directly anyway -- the organic dielectrics used in advanced processes like the old metal-melting temperatures even less than tin does.
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It's all simulations!
Little early to be getting metaphysical.
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....Tin is going to be a major problem for much semiconductor processing - as it means you basically now can't solder the chip, or do any even 'low' temperature processing after it's deposited - it has to be the last layer.
From the article:
"...adding fluorine atoms to the tin would extend its operating range to at least 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit)."
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Chips are commonly assembled by soldering - using tin-based solder.
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It's even worse than that. Tin whiskers - it's a characteristic of the metal. No one knows why, the only suspicion we have is Tin does it to relieve stress in the crystal.
And it appears atoms are willing to migrate from all throughout the bulk to whiskers - if you look at whiskers under a mic
Whiskers (Score:2)
It's even worse than that. Tin whiskers - it's a characteristic of the metal. No one knows why, the only suspicion we have is Tin does it to relieve stress in the crystal.
Fullerenes aren't crystals, though. For the same reason that graphene and nanotubes don't have carbon wandering around all over the place, neither is tin likely to. In fact, given the higher mass of a tin atom compared to carbon, it could be a whole lot harder to get one to leave its place in the array.
Link to non-paywalled version of paper (Score:5, Informative)
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What the fuck timothy? How many years has it been?
Single layer (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you not in the semiconductor business, the fact that these conductive strips is pretty important too. Most of the capacitance (that has to be charged and discharged whenever a node switches, causing losses in the transistors driving the node) is sidewall capacitance: capacitance between adjacent lines on the same level. Single-layer conductors won't completely do away with lateral capacitance (fringing, for instance) and the vertical capacitance will still be there -- but there's going to be a big reduction in power if they can get this to work. My guess is that by the time it reaches production it won't exactly be one layer, either -- it'll be a laminate with multiple redundant layers.
Always assuming the predictions play out.
Re:Single layer (Score:4, Funny)
the fact that these conductive strips is pretty important too
Did you accidentally a word?
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Physics trumps linguistics.
A link to the Arxiv version of the paper (Score:4, Informative)
Single atom layer (Score:2)
So it can conduct small current with little or no resistance
and its not scaalable
good for chips, but you're not going to be transporting gigwatts or power from the wind farms to the cities with no losses, or improving the efficiency of your electric car.
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OK, so you have found two applications where it isn't usable.
In computers it is on the other hand very usable. Take a look at an i7-920 [intel.com]
With a core voltage at ~1V and a TDP of 130W you have about 130A circling around there in total.
Even with a relatively small resistivity of 5mohm/cm you have a lot of losses in the conductive paths in the chip at currents like that.
It is not an insignificant improvement in battery life on laptops and phones and the reduction in cooling in desktops and server racks isn't some
What is "efficiency" in this case? (Score:2)
For someone who is not an expert in the field, what is the efficiency of the conductor? It seems to refer to the fact that no charge is lost (dissipated) between the ends of the conductor, but it's not clear.
I assume since no one used the word "superconductor" that it has a finite resistance; does anyone know what the resistance is? (would large bundles of these conductors be useful for energy transport?)
Could? May? (Score:1)
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Come back when you have something beyond speculation.
Well done on completely failing to understand what research is.
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How else, pray tell, are in silica calculations going to be described any other way?
It's a little more than "speculation", but I figure your armchair science degree probably didn't prepare you for that.
not a superconductor, a topological insulator (Score:5, Informative)
These guys are talking about a 2D topological insulator. This is the current hot area of research in condensed matter physics, and is absolutely not a superconductor.
A topological insulator is best described as an insulator, which for very particular types of conduction (direction, location and energy limited) acts like a very good metal. It's really interesting, and scientists are trying to show it will have practical use, and these materials might end up in a computer chip in a few years, but...
There is a big difference between a lab effect and the real world. Carbon nanotubes have most of the same "non scattering" effects you'd hope to find in a topological insulator. Yet, in most actual devices, they do not conduct in bulk the way theory would suggest. For nanoscale systems (these are nanoscale systems) the environment around the material is nearly as important as the material itself, and scattering from the environment (oxides, metals, air) drastically reduces the performance of the material. There are ways around that, but the additional costs and engineering difficulty are generally enough to prevent any practical commercialization.
Full Article Text (Score:1)
Here's a pdf of the full article:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/186970759/Xu-Y-Binghai-Y-Hai-Hun-Z-Jing-W-Gang-X-Peizhe-T-Wenhui-D-Shou-Cheng-Z-2013-Large-Gap-Quantum-Spin-Hall-Insulators-in-Tin-Fi?secret_password=1s8nqw1pazkc9kw6m3i7
All the way to Pandora for tin? (Score:2)
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Actually, it's a chunk of natural lead (galena). Go figure.
earlier work on arxiv (Score:2)
For those interested in a more in-depth treatment... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3008.pdf [arxiv.org]
The effect only works for a single-atom layer... (Score:2)
but scientists are now hard at work to develop larger tin atoms.
Doubtful (Score:3)
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Have no fear, your beloved organ is safe in your hands. This breakthrough has yet to be broken through -- And even still, it's a 1 atom thick layer: Aluminium case computers and phones would be a more technological threat to your pipe like love.