US-China tech war: TSMC helps make breakthrough in semiconductor materials that could push back the ‘end’ of Moore’s Law

Using the semi-metal bismuth, researchers from TSMC, MIT, and NTU have shown a way to make chips smaller than 1nm

However, analysts say the breakthrough will not be ready for commercialisation for about a decade

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Visitors look at a display of a semiconductor device at a trade fair for semiconductor technology, in Shanghai, China. Photo: Reuters

Che Panin BeijingandCelia Chenin Shenzhen

Published: 9:00pm, 19 May 2021Updated: 9:00pm, 19 May 2021

A group of researchers that includes Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract producer of advanced chips, have made a breakthrough in semiconductor materials, further pushing back the oft-predicted “end” of Moore’s Law and widening the capability gap with the mainland.

Scientists and researchers from TSMC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National Taiwan University (NTU) have shown in a paper, published in the scientific journal Nature, a process that uses the semi-metal bismuth to enable the manufacture of semiconductors below 1-nanometer (nm), according to an announcement published on NTU’s website.

While today’s most advanced technologies can produce chips as small as 3nm, this latest breakthrough has the potential “to break the limits of Moore’s Law,” explained NTU professor Chih-I Wu, one of the 23 authors, in the announcement.

First observed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, Moore’s Law has become a “rule of thumb” about the advancement of computing power, maintaining that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years while the overall cost of that computing power halves.

A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) at its headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Photo: Reuters

Chip makers, and world governments, are pushing the physical limits of semiconductors in a race to own a key piece future technology.

US tech firm IBM recently announced the world’s first 2nm chip technology that could, according to the company, quadruple smartphone battery life, cut the carbon footprint of data centres, speed up laptops, and contribute to higher-performing artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

US-China tech war: TSMC helps make breakthrough in semiconductor materials that could push back the ‘end’ of Moore’s Law

Using the semi-metal bismuth, researchers from TSMC, MIT, and NTU have shown a way to make chips smaller than 1nm However, analysts say the breakthrough will not be ready for commercialisation for about a decade

Using the semi-metal bismuth, researchers from TSMC, MIT, and NTU have shown a way to make chips smaller than 1nm

However, analysts say the breakthrough will not be ready for commercialisation for about a decade