Transistor Material Provides Additional Computing Degrees of Freedom

For several decades, improvements in conventional transistor materials have been sufficient to sustain Moore’s Law — the historical pattern of microchip manufacturers packing more transistors (and thus more information storage and handling capacity) into a given volume of silicon. Today, however, chipmakers are concerned that they might soon reach the fundamental limits of conventional materials. If they cannot continue to pack more transistors into smaller spaces, they worry that Moore’s Law would break down, preventing future circuits from becoming smaller and more powerful than their predecessors. Researchers worldwide are seeking new materials that can compute in smaller spaces, primarily by taking advantage of the additional degrees of freedom that the materials offer — using a material’s unique properties to perform more computations in the same space.