Scientists use DNA to assemble a transistor from graphene

Sep. 6, 2013 Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms arrayed in a honeycomb pattern, just a single atom thick. It could be a better semiconductor than silicon -- if we could fashion it into ribbons 20 to 50 atoms wide. Could DNA help?

DNA is the blueprint for life. Could it also become the template for making a new generation of computer chips based not on silicon, but on an experimental material known as graphene?

That's the theory behind a process that Stanford chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao reveals in Nature Communications.

Bao and her co-authors, former post-doctoral fellows Anatoliy Sokolov and Fung Ling Yap, hope to solve a problem clouding the future of electronics: consumers expect silicon chips to continue getting smaller, faster and cheaper, but engineers fear that this virtuous cycle could grind to a halt.

Why has to do with how silicon chips work.

Everything starts with the notion of the semiconductor, a type of material that can be induced to either conduct or stop the flow of electricity. Silicon has long been the most popular semiconductor material used to make chips.

The basic working unit on a chip is the transistor. Transistors are tiny gates that switch electricity on or off, creating the zeroes and ones that run software.

To build more powerful chips, designers have done two things at the same time: they've shrunk transistors in size and also swung those gates open and shut faster and faster.

The net result of these actions has been to concentrate more electricity in a diminishing space. So far that has produced small, faster, cheaper chips. But at a certain point, heat and other forms of interference could disrupt the inner workings of silicon chips.

"We need a material that will let us build smaller transistors that operate faster using less power," Bao said.

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Scientists use DNA to assemble a transistor from graphene