Technology

The great thing about CMOS is that it's essentially a printing process. You take a sheet of silicon and coat it with different patterns of different chemicals, to form all the electrical structures. It's very simple and cheap.

How are graphene-based electronics to be mass produced?

Yeah, 2024 does seem to be overstating things. I can see this technology starting to get commercialized by 2024, but it's going to take time to grow infrastructure to mass produce.

Here's the content for the article:

Recently, there was another news item that maxed out major websites. Chinese genius scientist Cao Yuan once again published a paper on graphene in the internationally renowned scientific journal "Nature". It means that China has once again made breakthrough progress in the field of graphene.

As early as 2018, Cao discovered that when two layers of graphene are stacked at 1.1°, superconductivity will occur, and he became the top four scientific figures influencing the world. Then in 2020, two papers were published again in a row, introducing new breakthroughs in the research of magic angle graphene. This breakthrough once again made the world focus on Cao Yuan and graphene.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

Why does graphene get so much attention?

First, let's take a look at what graphene is. Graphene is a two-dimensional carbon nanomaterial composed of carbon atoms. It can play an important role in electronic chips, biomedicine, military industry and other fields. It is called "universal superconducting material" and is also considered to be a good The king of materials.

In 2004, graphene was discovered by scientists. The thickness of single-layer graphene is only 0.355 nanometers, so it is considered a two-dimensional material. The discovery of graphene can be regarded as one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. It is the thinnest, hardest nanomaterial known in the world with the best thermal and electrical conductivity. It is hailed as a new strategic innovation that will subvert the future. material. Some people even say that if the 20th century is the century of single crystal silicon, then the 21st century is the century of graphene.

The scientist who discovered it also won the Nobel Prize in 2010. This material can play an important role in the future scientific and technological development of mankind. China has successfully led the world in the field of graphene, which is inseparable from Cao Yuan's efforts.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

Now China's graphene single crystal technology has welcomed Come breakthrough, and this is not good news for the United States. Because this may shake the US dominance in the field of chips, allowing China to overtake in corners.

Why do you say that? As we all know, the 20th century was a period of rapid development of human science and technology, and many high-tech industries emerged in that era. The development of high-tech is inseparable from chips, and China's high-tech restrictions are mainly related to chips.

The chips we see today are all made of silicon-based materials, so this type of chip is also called a silicon-based chip. After decades of research, mankind has made tremendous progress in silicon-based chips. However, according to Moore's Law, the development of silicon-based chips has its own bottleneck. The current chip research and development of mankind is close to the limit of silicon-based chips.

There are countless transistors in the chip. The upgrade of the chip is mainly to add more transistors under the same size. The actual size of the chip is the gate width of the transistor, and 7 nanometers has reached the limit of the gate width. If it continues to shrink, the electrons will not travel enough distance, and the phenomenon of leakage will naturally occur. The smaller the gate, the more serious this phenomenon. The main difficulty of the 5 nanometer technology we see today is how to reduce leakage. And this kind of problem gets more serious as it gets later, and at the same time it becomes more difficult to solve.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

Carbon-based chip made of graphene , Can solve this problem. First of all, the processing power of graphene-made chips is 1,000 times that of silicon-based chips. In other words, as long as it can achieve the same technology as silicon-based chips, the performance of the chip can be increased by 1,000 times. In addition, graphene has the characteristics of high conductivity, which is not only more stable than silicon-based chips, but also the problem of leakage is easier to solve.

At present, China's carbon-based chip research has achieved proud results. The manufacturing technology of carbon-based chips has completely led the world. In 2020, at the International Graphene Innovation Conference in Shanghai, the Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrated the achievements of China's carbon-based chips, an 8-inch graphene single crystal wafer. Both in size and performance, it is ahead of other countries in the world. And this product has been able to be produced in small batches, which is a huge blow to the United States.

At present, the United States is firmly blocking China's silicon-based chip technology, which has slowed China's progress in this area. The breakthrough of carbon-based chips at this stage indicates that we may complete Overtaking in corners, and no longer relying on silicon-based chips. This of course shakes, the US dominance in chips.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

At present, China has successfully developed carbon transistors with only 5 nanometers. This is currently the smallest high-performance transistor in the world. At the same time, through brand-new purification and self-assembly methods, we have been able to develop carbon nanotube materials for semiconductor arrays with higher density and purity. Let us take another big step forward in the research of high-performance carbon-based chips.

Today, the total number of graphene product patents filed by China is far ahead of other countries in the world. The annual output of graphene exceeds 300 tons, and the stable output can better meet the needs of China's development, and may accelerate the research of China's carbon-based chips.

The leader in graphene technology will bring China an industry leader. Graphene has a wide range of applications. In addition to the high-tech industries mentioned above, it also plays a huge role in slightly downstream products and fields. According to expert predictions, after 2024, graphene devices are expected to replace complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices. It is used in nanoelectronic devices, photoelectrochemical cells, ultralight aircraft materials and other fields. Even clothing, thermal products, mobile phones, body armor, batteries, etc., can use graphene.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

And China's application in this field has been Achieve very good results. With the advancement of technology and the acceleration of commercial applications, graphene has a huge market prospect. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China has already planned to make graphene a leading industry in China.

In 2015, a very clear plan was made for the development of the graphene industry in the next ten years. The goal is to form an industrial scale of tens of billions by 2020, and the overall industrial scale will exceed 100 billion by 2025. This is only the graphene industry in China.

Internationally, various countries have also invested heavily in the graphene industry. In 2013, the European Union listed graphene as a pillar material for emerging technologies in the future, and allocated 1 billion euros for research. The National Natural Science Foundation of the United States has also funded more than 500 graphene studies, hoping to be one step ahead in graphene technology and take the lead in building a graphene industry.

China's graphene: the king of new materials, may be able to overtake in the chip field

In 2015, the scale of the global graphene industry has reached Reach over 100 billion, and China is far ahead. Now that the scale of the industry has been further expanded, China is still leading in this regard. This is a brand new opportunity for China, not only to seize the global market, but also an opportunity for Chinese technology to occupy the world's highlands. For more than a century, China has gone from lagging far behind others to standing at the forefront of the world. During this period, there have been countless experiences of getting stuck, and then relying on independent research and development to break through the blockade. The development history of China's modern history is a sad history of catching up. All this may change in the 21st century.

Yeah, it'll be amazing to finally see something other than silicon used for a computing substrate.