"At an event today in San Francisco, Intel announced one of the most important pieces of semiconductor news in many years: the company's upcoming 22nm processors will feature a fundamental change to the design of the most basic building block of every computer chip, the transistor. Intel has been exploring the new transistor for over a decade, and the company first announced a significant breakthrough with the design in 2002.

"Molybdenite looks similar to mica and is often found with quartz deposits. Its current uses include steel alloy blends and industrial lubricants. What the EPFL team discovered was that molybdenite is also an excellent semiconductor with a 1.8 electron-volt gap. The highly 2D naturally occurring structure of the material makes it more efficient electrically than silicon, this could result in a reduction in standby mode losses by as much as a 10^5."

IBM has created graphene transistors that leave silicon ones in the dust.