Compound semiconductors join the race to sustain Moore´s law [News]

Engineers at Imec and IBM have independently developed new manufacturing processes for making the next decade´s leading chips, they revealed late last year. These efforts will allow the marriage of silicon wafers and certain exotic materials-compound semiconductors with ingredients from columns III and V of the old periodic table. This mixing of materials holds the key to maintaining the traditional performance improvements associated with Moore??s Law and the shrinking of transistor dimensions.