In the past two years, the US’s blockade of chips from Chinese technology companies such as Huawei has verified the foreign media’s evaluation of "China Chip" a few years ago-relatively backward, but the backwardness of "China Chip" refers to traditional silicon-based chips.
The so-called silicon-based chip is to melt a grain of sand to extract single crystal silicon with a purity of up to 99.999%, and then cut it into thin wafers, and then integrate the wafers. Lithography, etching, plasma injection, packaging and testing, etc., can finally be applied to a variety of electronic products.
It is undeniable that in the field of silicon-based chips, China's technology is indeed inferior to the United States, Europe and Japan. The United States controls the light source technology and monopolizes the EDA industrial software market, the United Kingdom controls the ARM chip design architecture, and Japan monopolizes the chemical material lithography. Glue, the United States and Europe jointly control the ASML lithography machine and so on.
In today's economic globalization, the division of labor is very clear. Why can't Chinese chip manufacturers use the high-end technology of other countries to make chips? The reason is that these countries signed the "Wassenaar Agreement" [The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Good and Technologies]decades ago, prohibiting the export of all core technologies to China and restricting the development of China's science and technology.
The US`s chip blockade against Chinese high-tech companies has made us realize that if we want to break the chip blockade, we must walk on two legs. On the one hand, we should increase our efforts in the core technology of silicon-based chips, quickly catch up, and even achieve overtake. On the one hand, we must actively explore a new generation of chips. Among them, carbon-based chips have high hopes, and China is already ahead of the rest of the world.
The key material of 2nm chip-graphene is confirmed by IEEE
With the update and iteration of the chip manufacturing process, the development of silicon-based chips has touched the ceiling of Moore’s Law. Every step forward will not only overcome countless technical difficulties, but also the materials used to manufacture chips need to be continuously replaced in order to integrate more Transistor.
In order to promote the development of the chip industry, authoritative semiconductor experts from all over the world gathered to discuss the issue of new chip materials at the "IEEE International Chip Wire Technology Conference" in 2021. After a few days of discussion, the opinions of the participating experts reached a consensus and designated graphene, which is more advantageous in optics, electricity and mechanics, as the next-generation chip material.
According to media reports, for the development of chip manufacturing processes, IEEE has designated graphene as the most important semiconductor material in the future, and continues to follow Moore's Law. The key material for 2nm chips will be replaced with graphene.
Graphene is a key material for 2nm chips, and China's technology in this area is at an internationally leading level.
As early as October 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences achieved mass production of 8-inch graphene wafers, which is a milestone in the history of the development of a new generation of chips.
It is worth mentioning that although the 8-inch graphene wafer manufactured by the Chinese Academy of Sciences is smaller than conventional silicon wafers, it is the world’s first graphene wafer. One time beyond, tore through the western technology walls, allowing China to master the dominance of a new generation of chips.
According to industry sources, many chip foundry companies have begun to communicate with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, hoping to cooperate in the field of graphene, including many domestic chip foundry giants.