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Silicon is so important for electronics and computing that it’s become synonymous with technology – even getting a valley named after it – but the stuff still has its flaws. Now, scientists have created a way to make super-pure silicon chips that could pave the way for more stable quantum computers.
newatlas.com
It looks like this advance may make significant improvements in chip performance. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Quite a few years ago there were claims that 28Si would enhance transistor performance, but it never became commercial; this looks like a viable way to create improved quantum devices, but I would be surprised to see it spread beyond those.
Given the super purity of semiconductor silicon, I find “super-pure” an imprecise description, but I guess “isotopically enhanced“ doesn’t catch media attention…
In theory more perfect substrates should have 0 impact on performance of leading edge CMOS devices as the channel is not made from the substrate. For nanosheet devices the channel material is made from epitaxially grown Si on top of the epitaxial SiGe. The one thing that may impact performance is that defects in the crystal structure of the substrate can cause aberrations in the grown film. I don't work in epi and crystals aren't my specialty so I couldn't really say if current substrates have to worry about this or if a good epi tool/process can deal with your rare point defect in current substrates. Although at this point I'd suspect that the growth process itself is far more likely to cause faults in the lattice of the channels than defects in the substrate.
newatlas.com