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China-born scientist targeted by US ‘discovers world’s best semiconductor’

  • MIT professor Gang Chen and colleagues say cubic boron arsenide conducts heat 10 times better than silicon
  • Chen was investigated under a US government programme for allegedly hiding connections to China, but the charges against him were dropped earlier this year

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MIT professor Gang Chen was raided by FBI agents and arrested for allegedly hiding connections to Chinese entities, but all charges were dropped in January. Photo: MIT/Handout via Reuters
Ling Xin
China-born MIT professor Gang Chen, whose name was cleared earlier this year following a high-profile investigation into his alleged China ties, has led a team to discover what they say is the best semiconductor ever found.
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In a paper published in the journal Science last month, Chen and colleagues said that a material known as cubic boron arsenide could conduct heat 10 times better than silicon, the most widely used semiconductor.

The new material’s extraordinary thermal conductivity makes it a promising candidate for next-generation electronics, according to the paper by Chen and co-authors from MIT, the University of Houston and other US institutions.

It also performs three times better than silicon when it comes to electron hole mobility, a crucial property for conductivity.

“If you build a device, you want to have a material where both electrons and [electron] holes travel with less resistance,” he said in a news release on the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering website.

Chen, whose expertise is in nanotechnology, heat transfer and energy conversion, made theoretical predictions about the unique electronic properties of cubic boron arsenide back in 2018.
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Chen’s lab was able to conduct experiments and prove their hypothesis using samples prepared by a team from the University of Houston led by another China-born professor, Ren Zhifeng.

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