SUPER SILICON BROS

摘要

It's a material so good they named a valley after it. And no wonder. Today's connected society would be impossible without silicon. Chips made from it run everything from smartphones to pacemakers, with some 6.5 million square metres of the stuff rolled out every year. And the solar industry relies on vast quantities of silicon to make the photovoltaic cells that convert light into electricity. Silicon is in such demand that you'd be forgiven for thinking its position at the top of the pile was untouchable. But its status owes more to the fact that it is the second most abundant element on the planet than to its performance. Crucially, silicon's atomic structure limits its ability to conduct electricity. And that holds back computer processing speeds and the efficiency of solar panels. If electronic devices are to get faster, cheaper and more compact at the rate we've come to expect, silicon as we know it needs to be shown the door.