Graphene's 'Big Mac' creates next generation of chips

Graphene's 'Big Mac' creates next generation of chips

  10:03:00 AM    Science Lover

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The world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester by Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov, has the potential to revolutionize material science.

Artistic impression of graphene molecules.
Image: University of Manchester

Demonstrating the remarkable properties of graphene won the two scientists the Nobel Prize for Physics last year and UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has just announced plans for a £50m graphene research hub to be set up.

Now, writing in the journal Nature Physics, the University of Manchester team have for the first time demonstrated how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future.

By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitrate, the team created the graphene 'Big Mac' – a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers.

Because there are two layers of graphene completed surrounded by the boron nitrate, this has allowed the researchers for the first time to observe how graphene behaves when unaffected by the environment.

Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, the leading author on the paper, said: "Creating the multilayer structure has allowed us to isolate graphene from negative influence of the environment and control graphene's electronic properties in a way it was impossible before.

"So far people have never seen graphene as an insulator unless it has been purposefully damaged, but here high-quality graphene becomes an insulator for the first time."

The two layers of boron nitrate are used not only to separate two graphene layers but also to see how graphene reacts when it is completely encapsulated by another material.

Professor Geim said: "We are constantly looking at new ways of demonstrating and improving the remarkable properties of graphene."

"Leaving the new physics we report aside, technologically important is our demonstration that graphene encapsulated within boron nitride offers the best and most advanced platform for future graphene electronics. It solves several nasty issues about graphene's stability and quality that were hanging for long time as dark clouds over the future road for graphene electronics.

We did this on a small scale but the experience shows that everything with graphene can be scaled up."

"It could be only a matter of several months before we have encapsulated graphene transistors with characteristics better than previously demonstrated."

Graphene is a novel two-dimensional material which can be seen as a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.

Its remarkable properties could lead to bendy, touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, wallpaper-thin HD TV sets and superfast internet connections, to name but a few.

Provided by University of Manchester

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Streaming games look to make consoles, PC upgrades obsolete

Streaming games look to make consoles, PC upgrades obsolete

  10:12:00 PM    Science Lover

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A screenshot of the OnLive ‘Arena’ of games

A new technology service called OnLive claims to have developed a way to stream video games over the Internet, without any lag that humans can notice.

The on-demand service would allow users to play games on any TV and nearly any personal computer – even stripped-down netbooks and PCs without graphics processors, said founder and chief executive Steve Perlman.

“When you want to play a game, you just click a button and it plays instantly. It’s that simple,” said Perlman. “So the instant you press a button to shoot something on the screen, the gun goes off.”

This has not been possible before, because unlike with music and movies – which can be compressed for easy online transfers before being streamed – video games are interactive and require instant responses.

OnLive’s technology gets around that limitation with a new form of compression that lets its game servers communicate with players over broadband connections in real time.

Thus, the service can also work on older computers, even those without a graphics processing unit – an essential component of gaming.

For a standard definition TV, a broadband connection of at least 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) is required. And for HDTV resolution, a connection of at least 5 mbps is needed.

Through a “MicroConsole” gadget, OnLive’s service will also be available for television sets.

In a demonstration on Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Diego, Perlman played Crysis – a game notorious for its demanding graphical processing needs – on a TV set and on a Mac laptop through OnLive.

Leading game publishers, such as Electronic Arts, Take-Two and Eidos, have already signed on. OnLive has also incorporated social networking elements for multiplayer gaming, such as letting users share ‘brag clips’, which save the last 10 seconds of your game.

Perlman has a lot of confidence in OnLive: “It’s the last console you’ll need.”

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