There have been many news reports about graphene, a light weight, super-conducting, flexible carbon based material (including several features on Digital Journal.) It would seem that graphene is not the only super-material in the running: there is much talk, and a little hype, about titanium trisulfide.
Titanium trisulfide is a crystalline material, made from the metals titanium and sulfur. In a computer modelling exercise, researchers predict that titanium trisulfide has equally good conductive properties as graphene. Like graphene the compound is incredibly thin — just one molecule thick.
Not only does titanium trisulfide appear to have similar conductive properties to graphene it also has one advantage over the material, its electrons can be conducted upwards and downwards. This means that titanium trisulfide can theoretically be produced to have an in-built “on-off” switch, giving it an advantage in the development of electronic devices and as a computer processor.
The research team argue, according to Extreme Technology, that titanium trisulfide is a better candidate material than graphene to replace silicon. Today most solar cells are based on silicon and technologists have reached the point where solar cells have been developed to the maximum efficiency. It is hoped that titanium trisulfide can take solar cells to a new level in terms of energy absorption and output.
The new research was undertaken at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The findings have been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition in a paper called “Titanium Trisulfide Monolayer: Theoretical Prediction of a New Direct-Gap Semiconductor with High and Anisotropic Carrier Mobility.”
