A few years ago, there were news articles about the great potential of Graphene, a type of carbon or graphite. I would say graphene to someone and they would say, “do you mean graphite?” And I would say, no graphene – no one had heard of it yet. As this article says, graphene is being researched, but nothing commercial has resulted from it yet. Now the newest buzzword seems to be germanane, which in one respect is like graphene in that it is a single layer of atoms, of germanium. Quantsuff sent me a link to this article, with the subject “Germanium Makes a Comeback?” If it does, it will be in a completely different form than the original germanium transistors. (Here is an article, and another here.)
I’ve read about SiGe chips, which are being made commercially, so germanium is still around though in a much modified form. The chips have advantages over Silicon only chips for certain applications. So germanium is still being used for some specialized chips. But as with graphene, it may be many years before chips made of germanane come out of research and get into commercial production. Hopefully it will be sooner than later. It would be great if they would be able to sell us a smart phone that would fit into a wristwatch. I was about to say into our ear, but I think that having high power radio frequencies that close to our brain might be a serious health concern. I guess that for display purposes everyone would then have to wear a pair of special glasses, like the Google Glasses. It seems that all of the electronics could already be put into such a small device, but there still seems to be a problem with getting the device to be low enough power so that the batteries can also be small enough. Perhaps germanane will be an improvement in this respect. If not that, then perhaps it will allow the speed of the chips to be increased, to get more done with less power.
I hope that the gov’t keeps funding this basic research, so germanane gets scrutinized thoroughly. Things look bleak for this type of funding since it’s one area that seems to be a candidate for big funding cuts. I hope not. The next big breakthrough could be just around the corner.
