Prof. Deji Akinwande's work on creating the first silicene transistor has been named one of the Top 100 Science Stories of 2015 by Discover magazine.
Made of a one-atom-thick layer of silicon atoms, silicene is incredibly promising in the semiconductor industry, but it’s also difficult to work with and faces some challenges before it can be used in practical applications. Deji Akinwande, assistant professor in the school’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his team solved one of these challenges in demonstrating that silicene can be made into transistors — a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and electrical power.
Akinwande and his team’s first-of-their-kind devices represent the thinnest of any semiconductor material, a long-standing dream of the chip industry, and could pave the way for future generations of faster computer chips.
