The man behind 99% chips: semiconductor legend Chih-Tang Sah’s ashes leave US for China

Celebrated Chinese electronics engineer who ‘kept his homeland in his heart’ while living overseas buried in Fujian with his late wife

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Microelectronics legend Chih-Tang Sah, whose legacy can be found in technologies including digital logic circuits, memory chips, smartphones, computers, aerospace equipment and AI chips. Sah died in July, aged 92. Photo: Handout

Published: 9:03pm, 5 Dec 2025Updated: 9:05pm, 5 Dec 2025

The ashes of microelectronics legend Chih-Tang Sah (Sa Zhitang), whose inventions underpin nearly all modern semiconductor chips, have been transported from the US to his ancestral province of Fujian in southeastern China for burial.

Sah and his collaborator Frank Wanlass’ proposal of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors laid the foundation for the development of low-power integrated circuits and the modern semiconductor industry.

By 2011, around 99 per cent of semiconductor integrated circuits, or chips, were fabricated with CMOS technology, according to the book High-Frequency Integrated Circuits by Sorin Voinigescu, an electronics professor at the University of Toronto.

Traces of Sah’s legacy can be found in a vast array of technologies, including digital logic circuits, memory chips, smartphones, computers, aerospace equipment and artificial intelligence chips.

This includes the fabrication of advanced chips that have become a flashpoint in China-US relations, such as Nvidia’s H200 AI chips.

Sah, who was born in Beijing, died “peacefully” in the United States on July 5, according to Xiamen University, where the renowned physicist was an honorary professor. He was 92.

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