Chapter 927
Chapter 927: Carbon-Based Chips!
After Lu Zhou received that email from Professor Wu, even though his body was still in Beijing, his attention was focused on Jinling.
After Lu Zhou delivered the closing ceremony speech at the conference, he immediately went to the airport and took a flight back to Jinling.
As soon as the flight landed, Lu Zhou got in Wang Peng’s car and went directly to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.
When Lu Zhou walked into the carbon-based semiconductor laboratory, Professor Wu Tianqun and his researchers were working on a piece of laboratory equipment.
When Professor Wu saw Lu Zhou at the door, he paused for a second before asking, “Academician Lu? You’re… back from Beijing?”
I just saw this guy on live TV this morning…
“I just came back in a hurry.” Lu Zhou looked at the experimental equipment behind him and said, “I’m not interrupting your experiment, right?”
“No, not at all.” Professor Wu Tianqun shook his head and said, “The experiment is over, we’re just collecting some data.”
“Good.” Lu Zhou nodded and quickly said, “What about the carbon-based chip?”
Professor Wu Tianqun smiled and spoke.
“The carbon-based chip is in the other laboratory. For safety reasons, I locked it in the sample cabinet. Follow me.”
After delegating some work to his researchers, Professor Wu Tianqun walked out of the laboratory with Lu Zhou and went into another laboratory.
Professor Wu walked up to a sample cabinet and unlocked it with a key. He then put on some gloves and carefully took out a palm-sized brown-tinted glassware from the cabinet.
“Because this is made out of carbon, the chip is sensitive to light. That’s why I kept it inside, do you want to see it?”
As Lu Zhou looked at the thumb-sized chip lying in the brown-tinted glassware, he said, “It’s fine, just tell me how it works.”
“Okay!”
Professor Wu Tianqun cleared his throat and explained the technical side of the chip to Lu Zhou.
A carbon-based chip was obviously a processor that was made of carbon-based transistors. According to Professor Wu Tianqun, this tiny chip contained more than 100,000 carbon nanotubes transistors.
Even though there was still a big gap when compared to silicon chips, which had hundreds of millions of transistors, this carbon chip was already capable of performing simple mathematical operations.
After hearing about this, Lu Zhou felt a wave of excitement.
The carbon-based chip is real!
What does this mean?
This means that Professor Wu Tianqun’s research team has successfully made a breakthrough!
This will have a huge impact on the semiconductor industry cluster!
“… So far, we have been able to achieve a 150nm transistor size. Although the technology is far from being mature, it has already displayed superior computing speed, energy consumption, and heat generation.”
Professor Wu Tianqun paused for a second and continued, “Most importantly, this chip uses the preparation method of ‘chemical vapor deposition + etching’, which is similar to the preparation method of the SG-1 superconducting material. In theory, there is a lot of room for improvement! We are currently looking for ways to further reduce the chip manufacturing process costs and increase the number of transistors per square millimeter.
“If we can achieve more than 30 million transistors per square millimeter and improve the process technology to the size of 10nm, it is entirely possible for this chip to be commercialized! The superiority of carbon-based chips compared to silicon chips is crystal clear!”
Lu Zhou: “How difficult is mass production?”
Professor Wu Tianqun: “It won’t be harder than silicon-based chips! As for the cost, it is more expensive, but the performance makes up for it!”
Lu Zhou said, “Nicely done, Professor Wu!”
Professor Wu Tianqun awkwardly smiled.
“Well, if it weren’t for your two theses in Nature, which provided a theoretical basis, none of this would have happened. Not to mention the SG-1 superconducting material; there was no way we could’ve built a carbon-based chip without the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.”
Lu Zhou smiled and put on a serious face as he said, “As for the research results, I’d like you to write two reports. One without technical details, just a rough summary. The other should be more specific, follow the research thesis format, and write down all of the technical details. That will be used for patent registering.”
After hearing Lu Zhou’s words, Professor Wu nodded seriously.
“Okay, I’ll do this right away, when do you need it?”
Lu Zhou: “No need to rush, just give it to me in a week, or a bit later. Your experiment is still the priority.”
Professor Wu smiled and said, “It’s fine, this won’t interrupt the experiment, I can guarantee I’ll be done in a week.”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Thank you then, I’ll let you get back to work.”
Lu Zhou was about to leave the laboratory when he suddenly remembered something. He turned around and looked at Professor Wu Tianqun.
“Oh yeah, the Communist Party of China is planning on forming an expert group regarding the technical feasibility of topological quantum computing, so I recommended you.”
Even though Lu Zhuo spoke casually, this was huge news to Professor Wu Tianqun.
Technical feasibility expert group for the Communist Party of China!
Usually, only academicians or academic leaders could enter these types of expert teams, especially since it was led by the Communist Party of China.
Professor Wu was only in the Changjiang Scholars Program. Normally, there would be no chance for him to enter a team like this.
Professor Wu took a deep breath and spoke.
“Thank you!”
This felt kind of weird since Lu Zhou was so much younger than him. However, he was truly grateful.
Being able to enter a group like this would be hugely beneficial for his academic career! Both from a networking perspective, and from a qualification perspective.
Lu Zhou looked at Professor Wu and spoke.
“No need to thank me.
“I didn’t do anything. You did this through your own effort and hard work.
“You should thank yourself.”