National Lab Researchers Boost Chip Design Processes With Artificial Intelligence

Argonne National Laboratory researchers uncovered and continue to explore new ways to advance a semiconductor chips design technique using artificial intelligence. They present several AI-based approaches to optimize atomic layer deposition, or ALD, processes in a recently published study. The method produces super-fine films of materials, like one atom thick. It also partly underpins the making of computer chips, which are now at the center of a global supply chain shortage that's pushed up prices of all sorts of electronics. "The effort predates the current chip shortage issues, but we have been looking at semiconductor processing and its manufacturing challenges for a long time," ARNL Principal Materials Scientist Angel Yanguas-Gil told Nextgov Thursday.