MIT News April 27, 2023 Semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult. Semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips. Using a low-temperature growth process that does not damage the chip, an international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sweden) has demonstrated a novel technology that can effectively and efficiently “grow” layers of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials directly on top […]
Category Archives: Computer chips
Faster and more efficient computer chips thanks to germanium
Science Daily November 8, 2022 The compound semiconductor silicon-germanium has decisive advantages over today’s silicon technology in terms of energy efficiency and achievable clock frequencies. But establishing contacts between metal and semiconductor on a nanoscale in a reliable way is the main problem with a high proportion of germanium than with silicon. An international team of researchers (Austria, Switzerland, France) found a method to create perfect interfaces between aluminium contacts and silicon germanium components on an atomic scale. They produced a thin silicon layer and the silicon-germanium. By heating the structure in a controlled manner a contact was created between […]
Materials science engineers work on new material for computer chips
Science Daily October 11, 2022 To save energy in computing by co-locating computation and memory elements in an integrated circuit manufacturing, a team of researchers in the US (University of Virginia, Washington State University, North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, Brown University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) explained how to engineer and enhance the stability of ferroelectric hafnium oxides, which are compatible with mainstream semiconductors. They showed that the presence of the top electrode during thermal processing results in larger tensile biaxial stress magnitudes and concomitant increases in ferroelectric phase fraction and polarization response, whereas film chemistry, […]