From AZONano:

Scientists have attempted to harness the unique properties of carbon nanotubes for decades, in order to develop high-performance electronics that are extremely fast or consume less power, prolonging the battery life and resulting in faster wireless communication and rapid processing speeds for devices such as laptops and smartphones.

A number of challenges have hampered the production of high-performance transistors made of carbon nanotubes, which are very small cylinders made of carbon just one atom thick. As a result, their performance is far behind semiconductors such as gallium arsenide and silicon used in personal electronics and computer chips.

Recently, materials engineers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed carbon nanotube transistors that perform better than state-of-the-art silicon transistors.

Michael Arnold and Padma Gopalan, UW–Madison professors of materials science and engineering, headed the team. The carbon nanotube transistors developed by the team obtained a current that is 1.9 times higher than silicon transistors.

 

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Image Credit:   Stephanie Precourt

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