What's up everybody，welcome to another episode of China Quicktake, where i provide you guys with
the most up-to-date political economic and geo strategic analysis on the world's No.2 economy.
Today's topic is China's "graphene" technology. Recently, another heavy news has sparked heated
discussions on major websites. The genius scientist Cao Yuan once again published
an article on "graphene" in the world's top scientific journal "Nature". In fact, it shows to
the world that China has made another breakthrough in the field of "graphene" application technology.
However, people doubt whether China has mastered the "graphene" technology as
reported by the media. Will it replace traditional silicon-based technology? So let us find out!
According to historical records, "graphene" was discovered in 2004 as a two-dimensional material
with a hexagonal honeycomb lattice formed by redox or mechanical exfoliation of carbon atoms.
In addition, relevant data shows that "graphene" is the lightest, thinnest,
toughest, and strongest material currently known. At the same time, it also performs
well in terms of electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and light transmittance.
Its application areas involve sensors, capacitors, transistors,
new energy batteries, flexible display screens, photosensitive components and many other aspects.
Many countries in the world regard it as a revolutionary material vital to future technology.
Besides, it is also known as the "king of materials", "the world's strongest crystal" and
so on. So is the carbon nanomaterial-"graphene" likely to replace silicon-based materials and
be applied to the chip field in the future ? Can it help China achieve overtaking in the
chip field and break the foreign technology blockade against China in one fell swoop?
The development of carbon-based material "graphene" technology. In recent years,
technological development has been so rapid that "Moore's Law" is slowly failing.
As early as 2005, the International Semiconductor Technology Roadmap (ITRS) put forward the
"Post Moore's Law" , pointing out that the development of semiconductors in the future
requires the common development of a variety of technological innovations and applications,
combining silicon-based and non-silicon-based technologies to
In order to deal with technical bottlenecks and meet the needs of the future market.
After so many years of development, silicon-based semiconductor materials
have basically reached the physical limit; however, non-silicon-based semiconductor
materials such as "graphene" will become an important direction for future development.
In 2012, the American "Electrical and Electronic Engineering Association"
wrote a book called "Beyond Moore". It is mentioned that the semiconductor industry
may enter the "carbon era" from the "silicon age" in the near future . The carbon
nanomaterial "graphene" is likely to replace the original silicon-based materials in the future.
As of today, the main material for chip manufacturing is still silicon
dominating . Everyone knows that in order to manufacture top-level chips, the most advanced
lithography machine must be used. The development of lithography machine is even more difficult
than the atomic bomb. China To this day, there is still no breakthrough in lithography technology.
Some time ago, China successfully developed the "8-inch graphene single wafer" . If this
technology is used for chip manufacturing, it will completely get rid of the dependence of chip
manufacturing technology on lithography machines. According to relevant experts, if the computing
performance of a chip made of "graphene" as the main manufacturing material is about 1,000 times
higher than that of a traditional silicon-based chip , if the chip made of "graphene" is used in
a supercomputer, Its computing power will lead the world for more than ten years.
In 2014, the world's chip manufacturing giant IBM in the United States took the lead in launching
the world's first multi-level "graphene" radio frequency receiver , which is the world's most
advanced full-featured graphene chip so far, and its fastest transmission The speed is a thousand
times that of traditional silicon-based chips ; at the same time, IBM announced that it will increase
its investment in "graphene" carbon-based chip technology to US$3 billion in the next few years.
Not long afterward, South Korea's Samsung and LG also announced their research and
development achievements in the fields of flexible displays and touch screens.
In February 2017, the CCTV News Channel broadcasted the special program "Magic Graphene",
which caused quite a stir at the time. According to the program, "graphene" technology is
expected to replace silicon and become the main material for chip manufacturing in the future.
The use of "graphene" to manufacture new components is expected to enable
China's chip manufacturing industry to achieve corner overtaking in the future,
thereby reaching the world's advanced level. " Graphene" chips will be an excellent opportunity
for Chinese chips to achieve corner overtaking, because this field is still blank on a global
scale , and Western countries' technological breakthroughs in this field are also very
slow because they are on the same starting line. In addition, China's ''graphene'' technology R&D
team has already blazed its own path in this field. The 8-inch ''graphene
single wafer'' announced this time will be the basic material for carbon-based
chips in the future . On the other hand, it can be seen from the current problems that Huawei is
encountering that no matter how perfect the chip design is, if the chip manufacturing
technology is not good, everything is empty talk. But then again, although China has developed an
8-inch "graphene single wafer", there is still a long way to go before this technology is
actually applied to chip manufacturing. Despite this, many netizens are still very excited. .
Because, the success of the 8-inch "graphene single wafer" shows that the huge changes in
chips in the future are getting closer and closer . If China's carbon-based chips can
be the first to be commercialized, it will bring disruptive innovations to the entire
chip industry in the future , whether it is production technology, production equipment,
or production materials, it will be reshuffled. According to relevant news, this kind of
"graphene single wafer" is currently in small-scale mass production, and China's
layout of "graphene" carbon-based chips has begun, which will lay a good foundation for
China's future chip manufacturing . "Graphene" is the future of the semiconductor industry,
and the quality of "graphene single wafer" directly determines the performance of the chip.
Therefore, China is currently accelerating the exploration of the improvement of the "graphene
single wafer" manufacturing process, so as to produce better chip materials at the lowest cost.
How can graphene be obtained? The first is: oxidation-reduction method , which uses natural
graphite, intercalated graphite or artificial synthetic graphite as raw materials, intercalates
and oxidizes graphite through concentrated sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate; and then
obtains graphite oxide after oxidation treatment , And then processed by an improved purification
device to remove acid and other impurities to obtain a neutral graphite oxide solution,
and then processed by a stripping device to obtain a graphene oxide solution; the graphene oxide
solution is processed by a drying and thermal reduction device to obtain Graphene powder;
the powder packaging device is then packaged into graphene products of different weight
specifications. Its characteristics are: high quality; ton level; room temperature oxidation;
efficient washing and so on. The second type: use plasma treatment process to pre-treat graphite ,
and then use the shearing force and cavitation force provided by the improved high-shear device,
supercritical device, high-pressure homogenizer or crushing device to make the graphite peel
off effectively. The graphene material is prepared. Its characteristics are:
high degree of automation; high efficiency; stable operation; green and pollution-free;
high product quality; low cost of raw materials. Hey guys, That's all there is to it for today. I'd
love to hear what you thought about some of the updates we covered in today's episode. So throw
your comments below, always love hearing from you, Thank you for watching, I'll see you next time.