A material that surpasses certain physical limits of silicon has been used to fabricate a prototype microchip in Switzerland.

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne’s (EPFL’s) Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) made the chip with molybdenite, which is claimed to improve upon silicon in terms of miniaturisation, electricity consumption and mechanical flexibility.

‘We have built an initial prototype, putting from two to six serial transistors in place, and shown that basic binary logic operations are possible, which proves that we can make a larger chip,’ said LANES director Andras Kis. via the engineer