Attempting to comprehend all the complex components of a computer chip can be a daunting task, with microscopic components layered and interconnected by "highway" copper wires, some of which are thinner than a human hair strand.

There exists an insulating material known as a dielectric between these wires to ensure they do not touch each other and cause a short circuit. Upon further magnification, a special dielectric exists between the chip and the underlying structure; this material is called a dielectric film, made in ultra-thin slices akin to white blood cells.

For 30 years, a Japanese company named Ajinomoto has earned billions of dollars by manufacturing these thin slices. Competitors have struggled to keep up, and to this day, Ajinomoto still holds over 90% of the market share.

However, a startup based in Berkeley, California, is now developing a new product to compete with Ajinomoto and bring this small part of the chip manufacturing supply chain back to the United States.

This company, called Thintronics, has a material (product) specifically designed to meet the computational demands of the artificial intelligence era. The company claims that this new material has superior insulating properties, and if widely adopted, it would mean faster computing speeds and lower energy costs for data centers.Under the stimulus of the $280 billion "Chips and Science Act," the company stands at the forefront of the semiconductor industry development along with other American companies. The Act aims to give the United States greater say in the semiconductor industry, especially in several niche areas currently dominated by a few international companies.

However, to achieve success, Thintronics and its peers must overcome a series of challenges, solve technical issues, break established industry relationships, and persuade global semiconductor giants to accept new suppliers.

Thintronics founder and CEO Stefan Pastine said, "Inventing a new material platform and bringing it to the world is very difficult. This is not for the faint-hearted."

Bottleneck of InsulatorsThe name Ajinomoto might sound as if it has nothing to do with chips: the company is better known for being the world's leading supplier of monosodium glutamate (MSG) flavor enhancer powder.

In the 1990s, Ajinomoto discovered that a byproduct of MSG is an excellent insulator, and since then, it has almost monopolized this niche material.

However, Ajinomoto does not produce anything else used for chips. In fact, the insulating materials in chips rely on a dispersed supply chain: one layer uses materials from Ajinomoto, another layer uses materials from another company, and so on; they are not optimized and integrated together.

The insulating system can work well when the data transmission distance is short, but when the distance becomes longer, such as the transmission between chips, weak insulation can become a bottleneck, wasting energy and reducing computing speed.

This is becoming an increasingly worrying issue, especially as the training of artificial intelligence becomes more expensive and consumes more energy (Ajinomoto did not respond to requests for comment).Pasting is a chemist who sold his company, which specialized in recycling hard plastics, to an industrial chemical company in 2019.

Since then, he has come to believe that the pace of innovation in the chemical industry is slow, and he thinks the same problem hinders chip manufacturers from finding better insulating materials.

He said that in the chip industry, insulators are "a bit seen as outsiders," and their development process is far behind that of transistors and other chip components.

In the same year, he founded Thintronics, hoping to find better insulators to provide faster computing speeds for data centers at a lower cost.

This idea is not pioneering, and many people are constantly researching and trying new insulators, but Pasting believes he can find the right chemical substances to achieve a breakthrough.Thintronics states that it will manufacture different insulators for all layers of the chip, which can be seamlessly integrated into the existing production line.

Pasting told me that many industry participants are currently testing these materials. However, he refused to provide names due to confidentiality agreements, and was also unwilling to disclose technical details.

Without more technical details, it is difficult to compare Thintronics' materials with competitive products from other companies. The company recently tested the Dk value (dielectric constant) of its materials, a metric that can measure the insulating capability of the materials.

Researcher Venky Sundaram evaluated the results. He has founded several semiconductor startups but has no affiliation with Thintronics.

He said that compared to other laminated films (the category of dielectrics that Thintronics is developing), their Dk value is impressive, better than any other material available today.The Road Ahead is Long

Thintronics' efforts have garnered some support. In March 2024, the company secured a $20 million Series A funding round led by venture capital firms Translink and Maverick, along with a grant from the National Science Foundation in the United States.

The company is also seeking funding under the CHIPS Act. Enacted into law in 2022, the act aims to foster the growth of semiconductor companies like Thintronics, thereby bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States and reducing reliance on foreign suppliers.

A year after the act became law, the government reported that more than 450 companies had submitted letters of intent, attempting to secure funding.The majority of the funding from this bill will be allocated to large-scale manufacturing plants, such as Intel's new factory in New Mexico, USA, and TSMC's new factory in Arizona, USA. However, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has expressed her desire for smaller companies to also receive funding, particularly in the field of materials.

In February 2024, a $300 million funding pool specifically for material innovation opened for applications. Although Thintronics has declined to disclose how much funding it is seeking or from which projects it is receiving funds, the company does view the CHIPS Act as a significant catalyst.

However, products related to insulation currently rely on dozens of companies worldwide. To establish a domestic chip supply chain in the United States means reversing the specialization trends shaped by different countries over decades. Industry experts have stated that it is difficult to shake the dominant suppliers of insulators, who are accustomed to facing new competitors.

Sundaram said, "For over 20 years, Ajinomoto has held more than 90% of the market share. This is unheard of in most industries, and it is clear that they have not achieved this by standing still."

A major challenge is that the dominant manufacturers of insulating materials have had decades-long partnerships with chip design companies such as Nvidia and AMD, as well as chip manufacturers like TSMC. It is difficult to ask these industry giants to switch materials.The semiconductor industry is very conservative," said semiconductor researcher Larry Zhao, who has worked in the dielectric industry for over 25 years. "They prefer to use suppliers they are very familiar with, where quality is assured."

Thintronics also faces technological barriers: like other chip components, the manufacturing standards for insulating materials are very precise and difficult to achieve. The insulating layer dominated by Ajinomoto is thinner than a human hair.

This material must also be capable of being perforated, with these small holes accommodating wires that pass vertically through the film. Sandaram said that each new iteration is a large-scale research and development effort, and established companies have years of experience in this area, thus gaining an advantage.

If all of this can be achieved in the laboratory, then there is another obstacle ahead: the material must retain these characteristics during mass production, and Sandaram has seen many companies fail here in the past.

He said, "Over the years, I have advised several material suppliers who have tried to break through Ajinomoto's business barriers, but they have ultimately failed, encountering insurmountable problems during mass production."Despite facing numerous challenges, one thing that might work in Thintronics' favor is that American tech giants like Microsoft and Meta have made progress for the first time in designing their own chips.

They plan to use these chips for internal artificial intelligence (model) training, as well as part of cloud computing services, both of which will reduce the industry's dependence on Nvidia.

Microsoft, Google, and Meta declined to comment on whether they are promoting the advancement of materials such as insulators.

However, Sandaram said that these companies may be more willing to cooperate with new American startups than to stick to the conventional chip manufacturing methods: "Their attitude towards the supply chain is much more open than that of existing large companies."