2 days ago
MIT engineers just built a salt-sized chip that could make your phone faster and cooler
What if your next phone call was clearer, your downloads faster, and your battery lasted longer - all thanks to a material smaller than a grain of salt? MIT engineers have just unveiled a breakthrough that could make this a reality, using gallium nitride (GaN) to supercharge the chips inside our devices.
For years, GaN has been the gold standard for speed and power in electronics, outshining traditional silicon - especially in high-speed communication and demanding devices. The catch? GaN has always been too expensive and tricky to use in everyday gadgets. But MIT's new fabrication method changes the game.
Instead of building whole chips from GaN, the MIT team created thousands of tiny GaN transistors on a single wafer. These are sliced into 'dielets,' each about the size of a grain of salt, and then carefully placed onto a regular silicon chip using a special vacuum tool. The process uses copper instead of costly gold and is done at low temperatures, so it doesn't damage the chips. This makes the method cheap, scalable, and compatible with existing factories - no need for a complete production overhaul.
Why does this matter? By using only a tiny amount of GaN, the cost drops dramatically. Spacing these mini GaN transistors across the silicon chip also keeps things cool, helping prevent overheating - a common problem as gadgets get smaller and more powerful.
To prove it works, the team built a power amplifier - the part of your phone that boosts your signal. The result? A chip that outperformed today's silicon-only versions, offering stronger signals, faster speeds, and better energy efficiency. For users, this could mean clearer calls, speedier downloads, more reliable wireless, and longer battery life.
What's more, the entire process uses standard industry tools and copper, making it easy for chip makers to adopt. The team's new vacuum tool can move and align each dielet with nanometer precision, ensuring perfect placement every time.
The research was presented at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium in June 2025, a major event for semiconductor innovation. Pradyot Yadav, an MIT graduate student and lead author, explained at the conference, 'We've combined the best of what exists in silicon with the best possible gallium nitride electronics. These hybrid chips can revolutionise many commercial markets.'
Looking ahead, this technology could even help power quantum computers, since GaN works better than silicon at the extremely low temperatures those systems require.
