Silicon Valley was, as the name implies, built on silicon. More precisely it was built on monocrystalline silicon is used to produce silicon wafers used in semiconductors and transistors, used in virtually all modern electronic equipment.

Recently, engineers at the University of Texas created the first transistors made from silicone, the world’s thinnest semiconductor material. The breakthrough could lead to faster, more efficient and smaller computer chips.

Until now, silicene has been extremely difficult to work with. In its one-atom-thick form, silicon atoms are under strain and become unstable when exposed to air.

Assistant professor Deji Akinwande and his team cleared one of the major hurdles in working with silicene. They surrounded the ultra-thin silicon with other materials and showing that it can be made into transistors, which are used to switch electronic signals and electric power in semiconductor devices.

The devices, created by Akinwande and his team at the Cockrell School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, rely on the thinnest possible material and could lead to the next generation of computer chips.

For inspiration, the researchers looked at carbon-based graphene. Graphene is another atom-thick material that has shown promise for computer chips. The team speculated that graphene could be structured in a similar fashion and would hold more appeal for chip makers, who already know how to work with silicon.

“Apart from introducing a new player in the playground of 2-D materials, silicene, with its close chemical affinity to silicon, suggests an opportunity in the road map of the semiconductor industry. The major breakthrough here is the efficient low-temperature manufacturing and fabrication of silicene devices for the first time,” said Akinwande in a statement.

The researchers recruited Alessandro Molle at the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems in Agrate Brianza, Italy, to help them work around graphene’s stability issues.

They began the process by allowing a vapor of silicon atoms condense onto a crystalline block of silver in a vacuum chamber. Next they added a silicone sheet on a layer of silver and added a nanometer-thick layer of alumina.

These protective layers allowed the team to peel it from its base and transfer it to a oxidized silicon substrate. Finally they stripped away some of the silver, leaving to layers of metal to act as electrodes with the one-atom-thick layer of silicone between them.

The team’s next step will be to investigate new, more efficient, methods for creating silicone. Currently, unlike graphene, silicone doesn’t occur naturally and has to be grown in the lab on a sheet of silver.

Lok Lew Yan Voon, a physicist at Citadel Military College of South Carolina, who published some of the first theoretical work on silicene in 2007, told MIT Technology Review that silicene may not be “commercially practical”. However, Lok applauded the team’s move from theoretical applications into a physical product.

“They managed to do what many people have been trying to do,” said Lok.

The work by Akinwande and his team, including lead researcher Li Tao, can be found this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.