As transistors in ICs become smaller and smaller, they need higher and higher current densities to perform at the desired level. Most conventional electrical conductors, such as copper, tend to break due to overheating or other factors at high current densities, presenting a barrier to creating increasingly small components.
The electronics industry, therefore, needs alternatives to silicon and copper that can sustain extremely high current densities at sizes of just a few nanometres.
The advent of graphene resulted in a massive, worldwide effort directed at investigation of other 2D layered materials that would meet the need for nanoscale electronic components that can sustain a high current density. While 2D materials consist of a single layer of atoms, 1D materials consist of individual chains of atoms weakly bound to one another, but their potential for electronics has not been as widely studied.
UC discovered that ZrTe3 nanoribbons have an exceptionally high current density that far exceed that of any conventional metals like copper,pushing research from 2D to 1D materials.
"Conventional metals are polycrystalline. They have grain boundaries and surface roughness, which scatter electrons," professor