Columbia University researchers have published a paper clsiming Re6Se8Cl2 to be the fastest and most efficient semiconductor  material known to man.

Re6Se8Cl2 is a synthetic superatomic material manufactured by Xavier Roy – one of the researchers.

The paper says:

”Rather than scattering when they come into contact with phonons, excitons in Re6Se8Cl2 actually bind with phonons to create new quasiparticles called acoustic exciton-polarons. Although polarons are found in many materials, those in Re6Se8Cl2 have a special property: they are capable of ballistic, or scatter-free, flow. This ballistic behavior could mean faster and more efficient devices one day.”

 

“In experiments run by the team, acoustic exciton-polarons in Re6Se8Cl2moved fast — twice as fast as electrons in silicon — and crossed several microns of the sample in less than a nanosecond. Given that polarons can last for about 11 nanoseconds, the team thinks the exciton-polarons could cover more than 25 micrometers at a time. And because these quasiparticles are controlled by light rather than an electrical current and gating, processing speeds in theoretical devices have the potential to reach femtoseconds — six orders of magnitude faster than the nanoseconds achievable in current Gigahertz electronics. All at room temperature.”

The problem with using the material is the cost of one of its constituent elements – Rhenium – which is rare.