Silicon is king in the semiconductor technology that underpins smartphones, computers, electric vehicles and more, but its crown may be slipping, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State.

In a world first, they used two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only an atom thick and retain their properties at that scale, unlike silicon, to develop a computer capable of simple operations.

The development, published in Nature, represents a major leap toward the realization of thinner, faster and more energy-efficient electronics, the researchers said.