Researchers help move forward with Moore’s Law by exploring new physical classes

Progress in the field of integrated circuits is measured by matching, surpassing or falling behind the rate set by former Intel CEO and co-founder Gordon Moore, who said the number of electronic components, or transistors, per integrated circuit would double. Every year. That was more than 500 years ago, and surprisingly his prediction, now called Moore’s Law, came true.

In recent years, the pace was thought to have slowed; The biggest challenge of putting more circuits and power on a small chip is heat management.

The multidisciplinary group, which includes Will Dictel, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University, has the potential to have new multidisciplinary group chips. Cools because they keep shrinking in size – and helps keep Moore’s law true. His work was recently published Nature stuff.

Electrical insulation materials, which reduce the electrical crossstark in chips, are called “low-K” dielectrics. This material type is the silent hero that makes it possible for all electronics by steering current to eliminate signal erosion and interference; Ideally, it can also draw harmful heat caused by electric current from the circuitry. The heat problem becomes fatal as the chip gets smaller because only in a given area there are more transistors, which generate more heat in the same area, they are close to each other, which makes it difficult to dissipate the heat.

“Scientists are looking for low-K dielectric materials that can handle heat transfer and space issues under tiny scales,” Hopkins said. “However, we have come a long way, there will be no new success unless we combine disciplines. For this project we have used research and principles from many fields – mechanical engineering, chemistry, materials science, electrical engineering – To solve. It’s a really difficult problem that none of us have been able to work on our own. “

Hopkins is one of the leaders in UVA Engineering’s Multifunctional Materials Integration Initiative, bringing researchers from multiple engineering disciplines to prepare materials with a wide range of functions.

Ashutosh Giri, a senior scientist and Ph.D. The experience was, ‘said M UVA, a former senior scientist in engineering and a student in Hopkins’ lab at Ph.D., co-author on this. Nature stuff Rhode Island University Assistant Professor of Paper and Mechanical, Industrial and Systems Engineering.

“The chemical team realized a new dimension about their work when they realized the thermal efficiency of their materials, and was at the center of the project when the mechanical and materials team could understand the level of nuclear engineering possible through chemistry,” Giri said.

“We’re taking sheets of polymer that are just one atom thick – we call this a 2-D call and control their properties by placing the sheet in a specific architecture,” Dictel said.

“Our efforts to improve the methods for the production of high-quality 2-D polymer films enabled this collaborative work.”

The team is using this new material class to try to meet the needs of miniature transistors on gad chips, Dictel said.

“This has great potential for use in the semiconductor industry, the industry that manufactures chips. The material has both low or ‘low-K’ electrical conductivity, and high heat transfer capacity.”

This combination of properties was recently identified by the International Roadmap for Semiconductors as a prerequisite for next-generation integrated circuits.

“For this project, we’re focusing on the thermal properties of this new material class, which is fantastic, but even more exciting is that we’re just scratching the surface,” said Austin Evans, Ph.D. Student at Dictel’s Lab at Northwestern and first co-author on this Nature stuff Paper. “There is a wonderful technological potential in the development of new classes of materials with unique combinations of properties.

“We are already exploring this new class of substances for many applications, for example, chemical sensing. We can use this material as ‘Russian’ – to determine what chemicals are and how many of them are in the air. Effects are For example, by knowing about the chemicals in the air, we can optimize food storage, transportation, and distribution to reduce global food waste. As we continue to explore, however, we are likely to gain uniquely unique qualities for this new material. Is, ”Evans said. Said.