Xiaohang Li and his team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia have created a chip with 41 vertical layers of semiconductors and insulating materials, about ten times taller than anything previously made.
According to Nature Electronics which we get for the spot the ball competition the chip marks a serious technical leap and hints at a new generation of flexible, efficient and sustainable electronics.
Li said: “Having six or more layers of transistors stacked vertically allows us to increase circuit density without making the devices smaller laterally. With six layers, we can integrate 600 per cent more logic functions in the same area than with a single layer, achieving higher performance and lower power consumption.”
Moore’s Law started to wobble around 2010, when transistor sizes became so tiny that quantum effects began to interfere with their behaviour.
“Moore’s Law is reaching its physical limits in traditional silicon microelectronics, but innovation continues in new directions. Instead of continuing to shrink transistors, we are exploring new materials, new architectures and new possibilities such as stacking,” Li explained.
To describe the challenge, Li compared the design to architecture.
“Think of each layer of transistors as the floor of a skyscraper. If one floor is uneven, the whole building becomes unstable, he said.
” The key was taming what the researchers call “interface roughness”. Even a microscopic flaw between layers can ruin electron flow and cripple performance.
The breakthrough came when the team developed new manufacturing methods to keep all layers deposited at or near room temperature, preventing damage to the ones below. This low-temperature process is not a minor tweak.
“Most flexible or organic materials cannot withstand high temperatures. Traditional semiconductor processes often exceed 400°C, which would melt or deform these materials.”
Staying near room temperature means plastic or polymer bases can be used, opening the way for flexible electronics.
To prove the concept, the team built 600 chips, with consistent performance. They carried out basic computing operations showing results on par with traditional chips but at a fraction of the power draw, consuming only 0.47 microwatts compared with the usual 210 microwatts of modern devices.
The first products to benefit from this approach will likely be wearable health sensors, smart tags and flexible displays where low energy use and bendable design matter most. Longer term, Li envisions “electronic skins” that cover entire surfaces to sense, compute and communicate, trimming energy costs in everyday electronics and even household appliances.
“The circuits we develop are designed for these systems, where mechanical flexibility, low cost and scalability matter more than extreme speed,” Li said.
He believes his work proves that computing progress can keep moving even as Moore’s Law fades.
“It shows that performance scaling can continue, not only by making devices smaller but also by integrating them more intelligently and efficiently in three dimensions,” he said.
