What is a carbon-based chip
At the end of 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences made an 8-inch graphene wafer, so there were more talk about carbon-based chips on the Internet. In addition, the continent's investment in carbon nanotubes is very large, which makes the continent far ahead in related processes. So what's going on with this carbon-based chip?
To know what a carbon-based chip is, we first need to know what the chip is. Simply put, a chip is a semiconductor carved with circuits. For example, according to what ordinary people can understand, it is a stone carved with a pattern, and electricity can run in this pattern. The so-called so-and-so base chip refers to the material of this "stone". Normal chips are made of silicon, while carbon-based chips are made of a carbon element (graphite).
The problem with carbon-based chips themselves
So has China successfully manufactured carbon-based chips that bypass the Western-controlled EUV lithography machine? The answer is no, at least not in terms of the role that carbon-based chips play at this stage. First of all, the carbon-based chip itself has many problems, the first is that the carbon element is too active and highly conductive. The second is that carbon-based chips are expensive to manufacture and cannot be mass-produced.
The reason why the chip is made of semiconductor materials is because when we use it, we need it not to conduct electricity at certain times. Silicon is an excellent semiconductor that meets the conductive requirements of chip circuits. However, carbon cannot be done, carbon conductivity is extremely strong, and the electrical signal in the chip circuit is difficult to circulate normally. So for now, no country in the world can make carbon-based chips, and China's production of carbon-based chips is just a rumor, and we are just more in-depth than other countries in the research of carbon nanotubes.
In terms of manufacturing costs, the cost of carbon-based chips is high. Chip manufacturing needs to use lasers to etch lines on semiconductors, of course, using chemical etching is also OK, but the accuracy will be greatly reduced, and the performance of the chip is naturally not as good as that of laser burning. The problem with carbon-based chips is that carbon can burn, and most carbon elements burn or vaporize in the face of high heat. This means that with the current level of human technology, we cannot mass-produce carbon-based chips.
The manufacturing process of the chip
In addition to the problem of the carbon-based chip itself, we can't bypass the other half of the big problem of the EUV lithography machine is the manufacturing process of the chip. Whether it is carbon-based or silicon-based, or even germanium-based or sulfur-based, it is always necessary to use a lithography machine to make a chip. The lithography machine is a tool for making chips, and it is impossible to lose the tool because the chip has changed a material.
For now, the EUV lithography machine is still the most accurate lithography machine in human hands, if we want to produce the most advanced chips, we must use the EUV lithography machine. Or China has developed a lithography machine with higher precision than the EUV lithography machine, otherwise it is only to change the material of the chip, and it is impossible to wrap around the EUV lithography machine, and we will still be stuck in the neck.
However, although carbon-based chips have such and such problems, China's investment in carbon nanotubes is not useless. Because now Moore's Law has come to an end, which shows that 5-nanometer and 4-nanometer chips have reached the limit of physics. To create a new era of chips, humans need to find better semiconductors, and carbon-based chips are an attempt in related fields.