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Black Semiconductor – beyond-Moore production in Europe?

Maarten Buijs
Reading time: 6 minutes

Aachen-based deep-tech startup Black Semiconductor has the ambition to enable mass production of graphene photonics in silicon semiconductors, in full compliance with industry standards.

The slowing down of Moore’s Law has become increasingly apparent in recent years, as we’re reaching the physical limits of semiconductor technology. Paradoxically, this slowdown is occurring at a time when the demand for computational power is surging, driven largely by advancements in artificial intelligence and other data-intensive applications.

With traditional silicon-based transistor scaling approaching its physical boundaries, the focus is shifting toward improving data transfer efficiency between components. The communication between core chips and to and from memory becomes a critical bottleneck in system performance. To resolve this bottleneck, there’s a growing interest in integrated photonics, particularly silicon photonics. It offers several advantages for chip-to-chip and on-chip communication: higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, reduced latency, scalability and integration potential into the existing CMOS infrastructure.

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