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The chips on the market are mainly made of silicon-based materials, and the conductivity of silicon-based chips is very strong, TSMC and Samsung use the top chip manufacturing process to compress the silicon-based chip manufacturing process to 5nm and 3nm.
But the road ahead will become more and more difficult, and researchers are already exploring more new materials and new paths. A piece of good news came that under the research of Chinese researchers, graphene semiconductors were born, which ASML did not expect.
Graphene semiconductors
Silicon-based chips refer to integrated circuit chips that use silicon materials as the main substrate. Its development can be traced back to the early 60s of the 20th century, when scientists began to study the use of silicon materials to make electronic devices. In the 60s of the 20th century, the manufacturing technology of silicon-based chips was still relatively simple, mainly using diffusion process and lithography process.
These early silicon-based chips were primarily used to make simple logic gate circuits and memories. In the 70s and 80s, more complex processes such as ion implantation, physical vapor deposition and chemical vapor deposition were used, which led to significant improvements in chip integration and performance.
Today, humans have been able to create 3nm chips using today's technology, and 2nm chips may be born in the next few years. However, it must be admitted that the physical limit of silicon-based chips is becoming more and more difficult to break, so researchers have begun to explore more development paths, and graphene semiconductors have become a key direction.
The good news is that the research team of Tianjin University has led the way to overcome the major problems in graphene research, created the world's first graphene semiconductor, and published a paper "Ultra-high Mobility Semiconductor Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon Carbide".
According to the paper, the research team formed an ordered buffer layer of graphene on the surface of silicon carbide through a quasi-equilibrium annealing method, which is chemically and mechanically stable to the silicon carbide substrate. This semiconductor graphene can be patterned using traditional semiconductor manufacturing techniques and seamlessly interconnected with other graphene semiconductors.
These properties make semiconductor-graphene a potential application in the field of nanoelectronics.
ASML was unexpected
Graphene semiconductors are very new to most people, and it is important to understand that graphene is a two-dimensional material composed of carbon atoms, and its structure resembles a honeycomb-like honeycomb structure. Each graphene monolayer is formed by a planar arrangement of carbon atoms, which are linked together by covalent bonds.
It has excellent electrical conductivity, and electrons can move at very high speeds in graphene, which makes it an ideal conductive material. Based on this characteristic, the mobility of graphene semiconductors is more than 10 times that of silicon-based chips, and the development of graphene semiconductors can be said to be a change of course.
In the paper, Tianjin University also mentions that the technology has significant potential for commercial viability in the future. Since it is a new material, I am afraid that it will also be manufactured using a new process.
Lithography machines are essential tools for manufacturing silicon-based chips, and it is unknown whether ASML's lithography machines will become a necessity once graphene semiconductors become popular in the future and have the performance to replace silicon-based chips. ASML did not expect that the global semiconductor industry may be reshuffled because of the birth of graphene semiconductors.
Of course, in order to popularize and commercialize graphene semiconductors, we still need to continue to make efforts, and now that we have a direction, I believe that the next road will be smoother.
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