Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have found a new material similar to silicon that could revolutionize the computer chip industry. This material consists of a sheet of silicon that is only one atomic layer thick, it is called silicene. The idea behind silicene is that due to it's extremely thin structure the material has fantastic properties for transferring electricity around. Being only one atom thick the silicene becomes a highway for electrons to transmit data for a ultra high speed computer chip. This material is similar to graphene which is a two atom thick variant of carbon except being that it is only one atom think it is even faster theoretically. The only problem so far is that because silicene is so thin it is unstable to the point where it is near impossible to work with and contain. At UT Austin a computer engineer by the name of Deji Akinwande discovereed that by making silicene on a think layer of silver, the material would survive with some stability in a vacuum. Although this is not ideal for commercial production, it is the first step in a what could be the new age of micro processors.
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