New centers set to transform microelectronics technologies
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies leads semiconductor nanomaterial effort aimed at extreme environments
February 4, 2025

Los Alamos National Laboratory is leading a multi-institution project that aims to transform how integrated circuits — essential components in computers, smartphones and home appliances — are designed and fabricated. The project will tackle challenges in energy efficiency and robust operation in extreme environments important for national security, including the ability to perform amid high radiation.
“This project aims to solve a key issue in electronics, that due to a dependency on electrons as information carriers, integrated circuits are reaching limits in bandwidth density, speed and distances,” said Jennifer Hollingsworth, scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Los Alamos. “The complexity required to accommodate improvements on integrated circuits means as much as 30 miles of wires shuttling electrical data across 10 or more different levels of a chip, all produced by increasingly inefficient manufacturing processes.”
Solving energy-efficiency and manufacturing challenges
The Nano Solutions On-Chip project (NSOC) is led by Hollingsworth. The project centers on the deployment of nanoscale semiconductors, such as quantum dots, in devices that use photons — in addition to electrons — as carriers of information. In contrast with conventional semiconductors used to build integrated circuits, nano-semiconductors can be processed into devices using ultra-low-energy techniques that also allow for easy stacking of electronic and photonic components into complex three-dimensional structures, solving key energy-efficiency and manufacturing challenges. They may also be inherently more tolerant of radiation effects.
An additional aim of the project — combining experimentation, theory and modeling — will lay the groundwork for understanding and mitigating radiation effects to meet rigorous requirements for space, defense and nuclear-security applications.
It is in this area where the project impact will be amplified by combining with three other projects into a new Microelectronics Science Research Center (MSRC) called CHIME, which stands for Co-design and Heterogeneous Integration in Microelectronics for Extreme Environments. Hollingsworth will serve as the first chair of CHIME, which will focus on making transformative advancements in extreme-environment electronics, device design that can be resilient and effective in the most challenging conditions, including extreme thermal and radiation environments. Four projects at the center, including NSOC, take on different aspects of heterogenous integration — manufacturing components separately and combining them on a single product, such as a semiconductor chip, to optimize performance. The projects will develop and study the effectiveness of diverse materials, processes and technologies.
Pivotal roles for New Mexico expertise
CHIME is one of three MSRCs established nationwide, including a separate center called the Microelectronics Energy Efficiency Research Center for Advanced Technologies, helmed by Sandia National Laboratories via CINT. Between the two centers, New Mexico national laboratories will play pivotal roles in addressing both DOE goals for microelectronics: energy efficiency and operation in extreme environments.
“This effort leverages two decades of leadership at CINT and Los Alamos National Laboratory in the development of nanoscale semiconductors,” said Adam Rondinone, CINT co-director. “The CHIME center, and the NSOC project and other projects within it, will help bridge the ‘lab-to-fab’ gap we see in the progression of semiconductor technology, translating our groundbreaking research into scalable, manufacturable solutions that address critical societal and industrial needs. It’s significant that New Mexico has landed two major new centers directed at cutting-edge technology and innovation.”
Institutions partnering with Los Alamos National Laboratory in NSOC are the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University and Sandia National Laboratories.
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