In electronics, materials take center stage

Abstract

Enabling most of the world’s technological advances, microchips are an ode to the ingenuity of electronics engineers. In the future, however, those engineers will become increasingly dependent on materials scientists. As circuits get thinner and thinner—below 1 nm within a few years—creative materials scientists will be called on to play a role in enabling further technological advances. “Many of the technical challenges in semiconductor manufacturing can be overcome by material innovation,” said Dongjun Lee, a researcher and vice president at the chipmaker SK Hynix, at a recent event in Seoul, South Korea. “Some of the materials we use now, they will not work on the smaller nodes,” he said, referring to future generations of microchips with even smaller circuit lines. Lee was speaking at the Strategic Materials Conference Korea, an annual event hosted by Semi, an association for chip designers and manufacturers. Operating in an industry that is notoriously cyclical,