Scientists from the University of Warwick and the National Research Council of Canada have achieved a new record for the highest “hole mobility” ever observed in a semiconductor material compatible with standard silicon technology, pointing to a comeback for Germanium (Ge), a material used in early 1950s transistors.
The breakthrough involves creating a nanometer-thin layer of compressively strained germanium-on-silicon (cs-GoS) quantum material, which allows electrical charge to flow far more easily than in conventional silicon, enabling future chips to run faster and dissipate significantly less energy.
New semiconductor could allow classical and quantum computing on the same chip, thanks … https://t.co/SCishPsr4B #QuantumComputing
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The new material achieved a record hole mobility of $7.15 \times 10^6 \text{ cm}^2$ per volt-second, dramatically higher than the $\sim 450 \text{ cm}^2$ per volt-second typically found in industrial silicon, by carefully engineering the strained germanium layer on a silicon wafer to create an ultra-clean crystal structure.
Dr. Maksym Myronov, the research leader, emphasized that this cs-GoS material combines world-leading mobility with industrial scalability, addressing the limitations of expensive, non-integratable traditional high-mobility semiconductors like gallium arsenide (GaAs).
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This achievement establishes a critical pathway for the next generation of ultra-fast, low-power electronics, with potential applications ranging from quantum information processing and spin qubits to AI and data center hardware with reduced energy and cooling demands.
