UNIST research team finds way to increase chip integration by a 1000 times
Team is a recipient of Samsung's research grant
A South Korean research team has discovered a way to increase semiconductor integration by a thousand times, the Ministry of Science and ICT said.
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology’s (UNIST) Energy and Chemical Engineering professor Lee Jun-hee and his research team has also reached semiconductor miniaturization of 0.5 nanometers, the ministry said.
Semiconductor miniaturization is limited as the smaller the device becomes, the more difficult it gets to retain data on them.
The research team said it charged the ferroelectric hafnium oxide (HfO2) of semiconductor devices that eliminated the elasticity between the atoms.
Lee’s team claims that applying this phenomenon will allow them to control individual atoms semiconductors and increase its memory capacity. Four oxygen atom can store 1 bit of data, they claimed.
The technology can applied to smartphones and tablets will will accelerate the miniaturization of semiconductors, the professor said.
Lee’s team is receiving support from Samsung’s future research grant, a program South Korean tech giant has been running since 2013. It has provided 758.9 billion won in funding for 589 projects so far.