New discovery paves way for ‘silicon of the future’
Just imagine taking two extremely ultra-thin materials with different properties and placing one on top of the other, and obtaining a new a material with hybrid properties.
This is what an international group of researchers have done with two atomic level semiconductor materials and have got a new material whose properties are not only hybrid but also tunable. The materials are nothing but crystalline sheets of atoms – measuring one millionth of a human hair in thickness. Scientists call such atomic materials two-dimensional (2D).
The two atomic layers are held together not by any physical or chemical reaction but due to a force known as ‘van der Waals interaction’. The materials used in the study are monolayers of molybdenum diselenide and tungsten disulfide.
Since the two layer...