What if the building blocks of life could be used to create better computers? For scientists at Stanford, that goal is one step closer to becoming reality.
Professor Zhenan Bao and her team are finding ways to assemble computer chips out of graphene, a two-dimensional molecule of linked carbon atoms with the potential to transform the electronics industry. She and her colleagues may have found the magic ingredient necessary for quickly and automatically assembling graphene into the transistors found in computer chips.
According to the paper published in Nature Communications, DNA, the instructions our bodies use to build cells, is a long and skinny molecule with the perfect structure for building transistors. Bao’s team developed a way to use DNA as a template, assembling graphene ribbons that follow the shape of the DNA chains. The resulting graphene transistors, which can be integrated into computer chips, last longer and are more compact than their silicon counterparts.
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