New research has put science one step closer to replacing the silicon-based computer chip with a different material. What does that mean? In the future, your smartphone might harness supercomputer-like speeds.
For decades now, there's been a guide for how small and how fast computer chips can get, known as Moore's Law. Observed by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, the law states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every year and a half. Though not an actual law of science, Moore's law has basically checked out, as the processing speed and memory capabilities of our electronics has skyrocketed while the electronic circuits simultaneously are getting smaller and smaller.
But Moore's law hits a dead end when you try making the circuits smaller and faster than the physical capability of the material you're working with. Right now silicon is king (and has been for decades), but it's foreseeable that the Moore's law will eventually reach its limit with that material, so researchers are looking for alternatives.
That's where the most recent findings by the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory come in. Researchers there described their success using magnetite - the oldest known magnetic material, which is a naturally occurring magnetic iron oxide - as an electrical switch in the latest issue of Nature Materials. Using a high-powered laser, the team lit up magnetite, causing it to either become electrically conductive or non-conductive. The two states could be the basis for the 1s and 0s that make up the foundation of all electronic circuits.
What was amazing about the magnetite experiment was that it could switch in only "a billionth of a billionth of a second," according to Discovery News. That's thousands of times faster than the transistors in silicon chips currently. And while only certain "islands" of conductivity appeared, with other parts of the material remaining non-conductive, the experiment showed that the complete material didn't need to switch in order for it to function as a transistor.
However, there's a big catch. The magnetite in the experiment had to be cooled to negative 310 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a totally impractical material for use in electronic circuits now.
The research is still good news for the future of electronics, though. Now, with the magnetite experiment, there's a "speed limit" set - an established benchmark to test new materials against. And the other success of this experiment, according to Quartz, is that the method to test the magnetite is a breakthrough in the accurate measurement of switching speeds.
The research team used X-ray pulses that burst at one-quadrillionth of a second, allowing them to see switching speeds much faster than silicon, and giving them a method to test more faster-than-silicon materials. "We understand the process," said Hermann Dürr, the lead investigator to Quartz, "so now it's about optimizing the materials. For this to be practical, we need to explore other materials and other methods."
The lab is set to try another material, vanadium dioxide, in the future, which may lead to faster speeds without having to cool the material far below room temperature. After that, it's figuring out how to make the faster materials switch without being burst by X-rays. Dürr says the road from experimentation to a supercomputer appearing on the shelves of Best Buy is likely a long one: "All we have to compare this process to is history," he said to Quartz. "It took many decades from the first demonstration of a semiconductor transistor to the technological dominance this device has nowadays... We need to generate a real winner if we want to transcend semiconductors."
Transcending semiconductors and beating Moore's law is imperative, if we want technology to continue to get faster, smaller, and better - not to mention to continue growing the economy that its based on. But with this experiment, researchers have laid the groundwork for finding the next big thing.