This is a great achievement towards developing new methods of creating usable graphene, but they key word here is "usable". As the article says, not all created graphene follows the pattern required for usable transistors, and it's a process that's going to get exponentially harder to refine as you try to get closer perfection.<p>Until we get there, I'm tending to treat this as another graphene vaporware, since I haven't actually seen anyone use any form of graphene for building some kind of usable (and more efficient) piece of tech larger than a few microns. I truly believe graphene to be "the real next big thing", but we're not there just yet.
Here is the link to the paper: <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130830/ncomms3402/full/ncomms3402.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130830/ncomms3402/full/nco...</a>
The approach is very elegant. DNA is uniquely good at manufacturing molecules. Some of the proteins the nature can make are amazing. So if you want to assemble something on the molecular scale this is probably the way to go.
This does indeed look awesome, but the article doesn't fully explain what it is that prevents us from scaling ordinary transistors further. If I understand correctly electrons start tunneling when transistors shrink to around 10nm (correct me if I'm wrong here) however Intel has 6nm process on their roadmap. Is Intel doing something magical to prevent tunneling or is my physics way off?
Chemically modified graphene (CMG) nanostructures with their microscale area, sensitive electrical properties, and modifiable chemical functionality are excellent candidates for biodevices at both biocellular and biomolecular scale.
The article is from Stanford, so I don't doubt it's legitimacy.<p>That said, the title sounds like the most ridiculous collection of scientific buzz words. All they are missing is "big data" and it will be complete.
People are talking about making smaller chips, but what about <i>space elevators</i>? Since DNA in a single cell is on the order of metres, we could presumably grow this macroscopically and find out if the breaking strength is good enough for space elevators. Also the graphene doesn't look like it's in the oxidized form touted a few years back, which was weaker than ordinary carbon fibers.
...<p>"How is he, dr.Riviera?"<p>"Well, you see, it appears that your husband caught that transistor virus.. Remember the breakout on the biochip factory he last year?"<p>"Oh dear, will he survive?"<p>"Why? Yes, of course! You just feed it from a stabilized 5/12 Volt source. Buy a 120W one."