At 0.8 nanometers, carbon film may replace two layers in future chip wiring

As transistors inside microchips continue to shrink, the metal wiring that connects them is becoming a growing obstacle to faster, more energy-efficient chips. Narrower wires have greater electrical resistance, while smaller gaps between them increase interference between adjacent signals. These effects impede data transfer and raise energy consumption—an issue known as an interconnect bottleneck, which is especially acute in data-hungry artificial intelligence processors.