A team of engineers at Fudan University has successfully designed, built and run a 32-bit RISC-V microprocessor that uses molybdenum disulfide instead of silicon as its semiconductor component. Their paper is published in the journal Nature.
Sulfur is dirt cheap, literally, however molybdenum is a lot rarer. Wikipedia says there are 10 million tons of molybdenum reserves globally, and humans use somewhere around 4 million tons of silicon a year, so limited supply could be a big issue.
Sulfur is dirt cheap, literally, however molybdenum is a lot rarer. Wikipedia says there are 10 million tons of molybdenum reserves globally, and humans use somewhere around 4 million tons of silicon a year, so limited supply could be a big issue.