Modified microwave oven cooks up next-gen semiconductors | Hacker News Reader

Modified microwave oven cooks up next-gen semiconductors

news.cornell.edu

> So TSMC partnered with Hwang, who modified a microwave oven to selectively control where the standing waves occur. Such precision allows for the proper activation of the dopants without excessive heating or damage of the silicon crystal. This discovery could be used to produce semiconductor materials and electronics appearing around the year 2025

So it only makes one step of the whole process easier/better, which is a great accomplishment. However, the title made it sounds like he modified the microwave to make microchips. Or maybe I'm just dumb.

Microwave ovens are just big radios that produce specific frequencies. Anything that can control radio frequencies to acomplish a task on an object will find a use somewhere in semiconductors.

I wonder how long until I can buy a phased array SDR microwave oven that can target the waves to heat evenly and use the reflections to detect the temperatures throughout the food

You might need to go back in time. Microwaves peaked in the late '90 when they had humidity and temperature sensors to detect when the food was property cooked/warmed.

Things went downhill after that as the cost cutting race to the bottom happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0

The industry never communicated to people those features were worth anything. That is, people saw all the buttons like "Potato", "Microwave Popcorn", "Healthy Eating" and figured it was a lot of marketing BS, something right out of

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

The industry never communicated that there was a gas sensor, that you'd actually get good results by using those buttons. It just seemed like another attempt to confuse you when the only UI element you needed was some ability to put another 10 seconds on the time.

I don't know if they sell this outside Japan but Toshiba makes some killer microwave/oven/steamer combos which size-wise look like a normal microwave. It comes with a cookbook. You dial-in the recipe number and you can easily make professional chef quality meals. I've even done pizza w/ handmade dough.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/TOSHIBA-ER-TD7000-K-Water-Stea...

If the article is to be believed (and I have no reason to think it is not; it seems unusually informative for a press release), this does not just make one step easier, it has the potential to remove a significant roadblock in a way to better chips.

Semiconductors are just what chips are made out of, the title is accurate.

The text of the paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362433747_Efficient...

This is not entirely new; microwave synthesis has been used in lab settings for a while, even with off-the-shelf consumer microwaves.

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