New transistors herald next generation of clinical laboratory IT solutions

Clinical laboratory IT solutions could be made smaller and more energy efficient thanks to improvements to one of their core components - transistors.

The devices act as tiny switches within circuitry, activating different paths depending on the input current they receive.

Now a team of researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne claim to have improved the design of the component using molybdenite.

At present, molybdenite is commonly used in lubricants and steel alloys, but not widely assessed for potential electronics applications.

However, that could change in clinical laboratory IT solutions of the future, as the Swiss scientists say it is a better semiconductor than graphene and more compact than silicon.

Andras Kis, professor at the college who worked on the study, says: "It's not currently possible to fabricate a sheet of silicon as thin as a monolayer sheet of molybdenite."

But with molybdenite, a wafer 0.65 nm thick can be fabricated whose electrons can move as freely as those in a 2 nm silicon sheet.