Challenge
Microelectronics powers all aspects of our lives, including AI, but America faces intense global competition in critical microelectronics applications, including ultra-efficient semiconductors for AI computing, power electronics, and communication networks. Microelectronics faces a tremendous scientific and technological challenge: designing and engineering the next generation of microelectronic devices and platforms that push the boundaries of miniaturization, processing speed, power consumption, thermal management, and operations environment.
AI Solution
An AI-driven full-stack co-design ecosystem will enable faster innovation cycles, de-risk new ultra-efficient manufacturing processes and component designs, and accelerate materials and manufacturing research and development (R&D), thereby leapfrogging foreign semiconductor technology. Frontier AI coupled with heterogenous and multiscale data that is accessible via federated learning techniques will accelerate microelectronics research by revealing the critical relationships and tradeoffs between materials, devices, and workflows.
Justification
For decades, DOE has been at the leading edge of microelectronics research, both as a consumer and as an engine of scientific innovation with expertise in advanced materials, nanofabrication, and quantum-related technologies such as cryogenics, enabling many of the technological breakthroughs adopted by industry.
National Impact
Microelectronics continues to be at the heart of technological innovation, and every American will benefit from recentering leadership of the industry in the U.S. This effort will ensure sustained U.S. leadership in the global semiconductor landscape, enabling the rapid growth of domestic data centers, advancing beyond Moore's law for AI computing and national security applications, and securing other technological advantages—such as global leadership in 6G communication networks essential for economic prosperity and national security.