Beyond Silicon? The New Materials Charting the Future of Microchips

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2022

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Microchips are in pretty much all of our electronic devices—if it’s got a plug or a battery, it’s probably got a chip. For the past 60 years, most of these have been made of silicon. But new devices demand faster, better, and more efficient processors, and engineers are hitting silicon’s physical limits. In this episode of the Future of Everything, WSJ’s Alex Ossola digs into the future of chips—how scientists are boosting silicon’s capabilities and looking for other materials that could take its place. Further reading: Graphene and Beyond: The Wonder Materials That Could Replace Silicon in Future Tech The Microchip Era Is Giving Way to the Megachip Age Chips Act Will Create More Than One Million Jobs, Biden Says Timeline of silicon’s development (Computer History Museum) Christopher Mims’ tech column for the Wall Street Journal Deji Akinwande's research page at the University of Texas at Austin Stephen Forrest's profile page at the University of Michigan Deep Jariwala's lab page the the University of Pennsylvania Wolfspeed's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	People are living longer, so the career you expected to cap off at 40 years could last 60.
0:06.5	There are very few people who can work 40 years and save enough money to not work for another 30.
0:13.0	Get ready for a 60-year career with a special series on your money briefing from the Wall Street Journal.
0:19.0	Wednesdays in September.
0:21.0	In the early days of computers, it took a whole room of machinery to perform even simple calculations.
0:31.0	And then, in 1961, came a huge, tiny revolution.
0:36.0	Here is a packaged integrated circuit.
0:39.0	Inside this package is a chip of silicon, which provides the electrical equivalent of many transistors, resistors, and diodes, all interconnected to provide the desired function.
0:50.0	Siliconships were a breakthrough. They were small and incredibly efficient.
0:55.0	60 years later, they've only gotten better. I mean, I have a supercomputer in my pocket right now.
1:02.0	It unlocks by recognizing my face, it tracks my location, it can make a whole movie, and I use it to call my mom.
1:09.0	Hi Alex. Love you, bye.
1:11.0	I had seen pictures of microchips, but I had never actually held one in my hand.
1:16.0	Recently, though, I decided to change that.
1:19.0	My boyfriend let me crack into one of his old phones to take a look at what's inside.
1:23.0	Are we going to know the chip when we see it?
1:26.0	I know what a chip looks like.
1:28.0	You do?
1:29.0	All right.
1:30.0	The phone's processor looks like a small black square about the size of my fingernail.
1:34.0	And like most chips in the devices we have, this one is still made out of silicon.
1:39.0	But in the past few years, scientists have started hitting the physical limits of that material.
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