Stanford Breakthrough Could Make Better Chips Cheaper

angry tapir writes: Researchers at Stanford University have come up with a new way to make chips and solar panels using gallium arsenide, a semiconductor that beats silicon in several important areas but is typically too expensive for widespread use. "[I]t can cost about $5,000 to make a wafer of gallium arsenide 8 inches in diameter, versus $5 for a silicon wafer, according to Aneesh Nainani, who teaches semiconductor manufacturing at Stanford. The new Stanford process (abstract) seeks to lessen this thousand-to-one cost differential by reusing that $5,000 wafer. Today the working electronic circuits in a gallium arsenide device are grown on top of this wafer. Manufacturers make this circuitry layer by flowing gaseous gallium arsenide and other materials across the wafer surface. This material condenses into thin layer of circuitry atop the wafer. In this scenario, the wafer is only a backing. The thin layer of circuitry on top of this costly platter contains all of the electronics."

Comments

Re:What makes it so expensive?

[PhunkySchtuff]

From what I understand of it (which is very little) it's relatively easy to coax a crucible of pure, molten Si to grow into a single crystal - those long grey sausage-like boules are a single crystal of silicon, so are incredibly pure with a consistent crystalline structure. It's a lot harder to get gallium arsenide to do the same thing.