US engineers have developed a technique that replaces silicon with carbon to make next-generation semiconductors. Boffins at Princeton University said that the electronics industry has pushed the capabilities of silicon - the material at the heart of all computer chips - to its limit, and that carbon could offer a viable replacement.
Stephen Chou, professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, explained that graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, could allow electronics to process information and produce radio transmissions 10 times more efficiently than silicon-based devices