Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland say they have discovered that molybdenite (MoS2), also known as Molybdenum Disulfide, is a very effective semiconductor. Molybdenite is used as a lubricant in a range of industrial applications, thanks to its natural slipperiness, but the Swiss scientists claim it also has unique properties that make it very intriguing compound for all sorts of semiconductor applications
According to the EPFL Professor Andras Kis, the big advantage of molybdenite is that it takes up much less space than a silicon-based substrate. “It’s a two-dimensional material, very thin and easy to use in nanotechnology. It has real potential in the fabrication of very small transistors, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells,” he says. “In a 0.65-nanometer-thick sheet of MoS2, the electrons can move around as easily as in a 2-nanometer-thick sheet of silicon.”
It is also more energy efficient. In the standby state, molybdenite transistors would use 100,000 times less energy than their silicon-based counterparts, according to the researchers. That’s because the electron-volt gap is 1.8, which is said to be nearly ideal for turning transistors on and off — when the gap is too big or too small, electrons tend to hop across it. Graphene, a compound which many researchers are looking to as a silicon replacement, doesn’t have a gap.