Silicon chips set to continue to dominate into next decade.

[JEMC]

HoloDust said:

Shadow1980 said:

HoloDust said:

There are few, haven't been checking for some time, but, IIRC, Germanium and some Gallium compounds.

Those elements are nowhere near as common as silicon, though, which is the second most abundant element in Earth's crust. What advantages would they have over silicon, and would their much lower abundance affect the price of computer chips?

Honestly, it's been a while since I've read anything on the matter (about a year or so), and it's not I'm really versed about it. I remember POET Technologies when it comes to GaAs, and lot of articles on Germanium and Silicon-Germanium.

I believe Fatslob-:O is more into matter, maybe he can chime in.

In the Arstechnica article about this story, there's a brief mention of why they have gone with it:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/ibm-unveils-industrys-first-7nm-chip-moving-beyond-silicon/

"Technologically, SiGe (silicon-germanium) and EUV are both very significant. SiGe has higher electron mobility than pure silicon, which makes it better suited for smaller transistors. The gap between two silicon nuclei is about 0.5nm; as the gate width gets ever smaller (about 7nm in this case), the channel becomes so small that the handful of silicon atoms can't carry enough current. By mixing some germanium into the channel, electron mobility increases, and adequate current can flow. Silicon generally runs into problems at sub-10nm nodes, and we can expect Intel and TSMC to follow a similar path to IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung (aka the Common Platform alliance)."