Hyderabad: A team of 30 scientists from the prestigious Indian Academy of Sciences (IISC) proposes to develop the world’s smallest chip ever – semiconductors.
If they succeed, it will allow India to become a leader in the factory and help companies further reduce the size of gadgets and lead to the production of wearable gadgets.
The proposed chip will be made using two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene and transition metal dinucleosides (TMDS). These chips will be measured as one Estrom or one-tenth of a nanomolecule.
The smallest chip currently produced is three nanometers thick. The thickness of human hair is usually 1,00,000 nanometers (0.01 cm) or 10,00,000 Angstrom.
“A team of scientists at IISC submitted a detailed project report (DPR) to the principal scientific consultant (PSA) in April 2022, which was revised and submitted again in October 2024. The report was subsequently shared with the Department of Electronics and IT. The project is expected to be shared with Angstrom-Scale Chips, which is expected to be increasingly smaller than the Angstrom-Scale Chips, which is much smaller than the smallest chip in production.
A team of scientists composed of 30 members of the Bangalore IISC is led by Professor Mayank Shrivastava.
Semiconductor manufacturing is dominated by silicon-based technologies, although efforts are being made around the world using 2D materials with atomic thickness.
In addition to IISC in India, Princeton University in the United States, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory in China, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, the European Union and the United Kingdom Institute of Science and Technology, the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, are engaged in 2D materials.
The IISC team seeks Rs 5 billion in funding over five years. By contrast, other countries have already invested millions of dollars in research on next-generation technologies.
According to an announcement posted on the Chief Scientific Advisor website, the project was conceptualized in 2021, and Niti Aayog has recommended it in September 2022 according to the IISC report.
