For decades, one material has so dominated the production of computer chips and transistors that the tech capital of the world — Silicon Valley — bears its name. But silicon’s reign may not last forever. MIT researchers have found that an alloy called InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide) could hold the potential for smaller and more […]
New Argonne etching technique could advance semiconductors
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new molecular layer etching technique that could potentially enable the manufacture of increasingly small microelectronics. “Our ability to control matter at the nanoscale is limited by the kinds of tools we have to add or remove thin layers of material. Molecular layer etching (MLE) is a tool to allow manufacturers and researchers to precisely control the way thin materials, at microscopic and nanoscales, are removed,” said lead author Matthias Young, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri and former postdoctoral researcher at Argonne.