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> Using non-silicon materials facilitates very tiny transistors—as small as 1 nm. However, as TSMC researchers acknowledge, the 1-nm process node is not likely
by arriu 4y ago
> Using non-silicon materials facilitates very tiny transistors—as small as 1 nm. However, as TSMC researchers acknowledge, the 1-nm process node is not likely to be used for years to come.
Is anyone else using non-silicon materials yet?
- ksec 4y ago>Is anyone else using non-silicon materials yet? Gallium
- Maursault 4y agoGallium could only produce microchips larger than silicon. What we need are diamond microchips which should outperform silicon chips by a factor of 23K and be a third smaller.
- hinkley 4y agoGermanium is bigger, right? It’s used in DSP chips and now in power transformers. The fact that it’s used for high frequency circuitry has always made me wonder why we don’t do large scale chips in it. Surely cheaper than the acrobatics we are doing for <5nm, no? It’s used in current-dense applications and leakage current is out boogeyman with silicon.
- twosdai 4y agoI have some background in this space in undergrad. Non Si materials are used in industry, germanium is used in some special applications and i believe its the #2 semiconducting material, however it is harder to use than Si because it's very difficult to keep it clean of impurities. Not the doping kind. Source: I helped with a research project using Ge. Here's the paper if anyone is curious https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8653561 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8653561
- kken 4y agoSiGe is used since the 90nm node as source/Drain material.
- e2e8 4y agoSeveral kinds of semiconductor materials are used for high power or high frequency applications but only at much larger process nodes. For example Gallium Nitride, InP, SiGe.
- kragen 4y agoThe first transistors were made of germanium, and before germanium diodes were made from selenium and from an oxide of copper. Crystal radios commonly used Schottky diodes made of galena. Gallium arsenide is big business.
- imiric 4y agoA related question: is photonics on the radar yet as a possible next breakthrough, or is it still in research and experimental phases?