You could think of a computer chip as something like Dubai. The people are electrons that zip around hallways, sidewalks and roads. Instead of asphalt and concrete, the chip’s pathways are made of copper. The buildings and homes with their factories, offices and kitchens – where actual work gets done – those are transistors made of silicon, which is literally made of sand. Like Dubai.
Silicon isn’t the only substrate that chips could be made of, and in fact your iPhone charger is already using Gallium Nitride as a semiconductor. Research is underway to make higher performance chips out of other materials like graphene or diamond.
Likewise, the chip industry already knows they need to come up with something better than silicon for the channel material in transistors, especially as the industry approaches atomic limits at ultra scaled nodes under 2 nanometer. The leading contender is molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). There’s a lot of work get all the puzzle pieces together to make this happen, and while most of the industry plans to use these materials in the future, they expect it to take over a decade.
Lab 91 is getting started now. By strategically targeting switches used in radios, they can bring MoS2 chips to market in just a few years. These RF switches can support ultra high frequencies and bring superpowers to every cellphone in 6G and beyond.
That’s just the beachhead. Building the first chip company to use this material gives them a huge head start on a technology that will ultimately be needed by all the chip manufacturers.
I’ve written extensively about the need for more, better, faster, cheaper computation when we invested in EvoChip and Lace Lithography. Lab 91 is an important puzzle piece for building better computers of the future.