A New Transistor made of Molybdenite: Thinner than Silicon and better than Graphene

In a recent advancement, scientist claimed that molybdenite could be extremely useful in fabricating smaller and more energy efficient electronic chips because of its distinct advantages over traditional silicon or graphene for use in electronics applications.

A discovery made at EPFL's Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) could play an important role in electronics. It was divulged that researchers can now make transistors that are smaller and more energy efficient. Research carried out in the Laboratory has revealed that molybdenite, or MoS₂, is a very effective semiconductor. This mineral, which is abundant in nature, is often used as an element in steel alloys or as an additive in lubricants. But it had not yet been extensively studied for use in electronics.

Molybdenite is a two-dimensional material, very thin and easy to use in nanotechnology. It has real potential in the fabrication of very small transistors, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells.  

When comparing its advantages with silicon, currently the primary component used in electronic and computer chips, , it was seen that it is  less voluminous that silicon, which is a three-dimensional material.

One of molybdenite's advantages is that it is in a 0.65-nanometer-thick sheet of MoS₂, the electrons can move around as easily as in a 2-nanometer-thick sheet of silicon, explains Kis, one of the scientists in LANES. He also commented that it's not currently possible to fabricate a sheet of silicon as thin as a monolayer sheet of MoS₂. Another advantage of molybdenite is that it can be used to make transistors that consume 100,000 times less energy in standby state than traditional silicon transistors. A semi-conductor with a band-gap must be used to turn a transistor on and off, and molybdenite's 1.8 electron-volt gap is ideal for this purpose.

And again if we take the graphene, whose discovery in 2004 earned University of Manchester physicists André Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, it showed that existence of the band gap in molybdenite also gives it an advantage over graphene. That is why molybdenite considered today by many scientists as the electronics material of the future, as graphene doesn't have a gap, and it is very difficult to artificially reproduce one in the material