Germanium Semiconductor milestone

This graphic depicts a new electronic device created at Purdue that uses germanium as the semiconductor instead of silicon. Germanium is one material being considered to replace silicon in future chips because it could enable the industry to make smaller transistors and more compact integrated circuits. The purified germanium semiconductor -- and now researchers there are on the forefront of a new germanium milestone. The team has created the first modern germanium circuit -- a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device -- using germanium as the semiconductor instead of silicon.