Compute This: 6 Ways Berkeley Lab Is Shaping the Future of Microelectronics

As the microelectronics industry moves to adopt gate-all-around transistor designs in next-generation smartphones, groundbreaking research at Berkeley Lab demonstrated an innovative approach to creating these advanced structures nearly 20 years ago.

The technology – called gate-all-around field-effect transistors (GAA-FET) – represents a key architectural advance for packing billions more transistors into the tiny microchips that are found in smartphones and laptops. The “gate-all-around” design enhances control over the transistor channel, leading to better performance and lower power consumption. While industry is now implementing GAA-FET through traditional top-down fabrication, Berkeley Lab’s early bottom-up approach showed the potential of this geometry using chemical synthesis to achieve these complex structures.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.