The world’s first 4-nanometer compound transistor has been developed by the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), a major breakthrough in semiconductor manufacturing technology, as the smallest compound transistors that can be commercially produced are 14-nanometers.
According to Moore’s law, the number of transistors in a dense IC doubles approximately every two years, which means transistors shrink to fit more semiconductor nodes into an IC, NARL researcher Chen Min-cheng (陳旻政) said yesterday.
The iPhone 6, released in September last year, uses a 20-nanometer chip produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which was able to mass produce the 16-nanometer chips used in the iPhone 6S released in September, Chen said, adding that the iPhone 6S also used a 14-nanometer chip supplied by Samsung Electronics Co, making the production of semiconductors a highly competitive industry.
Five-nanometer transistors were thought to be the end of Moore’s law for scaling electronic devices, as 5 nanometers represents the physical limit of silicon, which is almost always used in semiconductor production, Chen said.
“However, the NARL developed a 4-nanometer transistor by using molybdenum disulfide compound, a semiconductor that is starting to be used in combination with silicone,” he said.
The NARL also developed a semiconductor manufacturing technology that could double the speed of electrical conduction by carving a fourth channel into the transistor — compared with the traditional three-channel design — to create an extra route for the electrical current to pass through, he said.
The channel is coated with germanium, which is a semiconductor like silicon, but has faster electrical conductivity, so it is generally considered to be the first semiconductor material to be mass produced after silicon, he said.
The NARL said that the technologies could be transferred to Taiwanese semiconductor companies to improve their competitiveness.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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