America develops chips that can withstand temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius

The new chip led by Professor Joshua Yang and Jian Zhao from the University of Southern California (USC) can operate perfectly at a temperature of 700 degrees Celsius (about 1300 degrees Fahrenheit) – hotter than volcanic lava and far beyond all heat resistance standards on current chip technology. “You could call this a revolution,” Yang said. “This is the most heat-resistant memory ever demonstrated.”

Until now, most memory chips in modern electronic devices have faced the same limitation: temperature. According to ScitechDailywhen the temperature increases above 200 degrees Celsius, chip performance begins to decline, causing even more system failure. Engineers have spent decades trying to overcome the upper limit with little success.

Meanwhile, new technology is being researched using a memristor, a nano component capable of both storing information and performing calculations. Structurally, it resembles a stack of small layers, with two electrodes surrounding a thin layer of ceramic. The team used tungsten as the top electrode, hafnium oxide as the middle insulating layer, and graphene on the bottom. Tungsten is famous for being the metal with the highest melting point, while graphene is extremely durable and heat resistant.

This combination delivers impressive results. The chip retains stored data for more than 50 hours at a temperature of 700 degrees Celsius without additional external influences. It also withstands over a billion switching cycles at these same temperatures, while operating on just 1.5 V.

This breakthrough was not the original goal, instead it was just by chance. At that time, the team mainly researched another design based on graphene but did not achieve the expected effect. But when they looked at heat resistance, they realized the interaction between graphene and tungsten had “strange behavior”: the tungsten atoms moving toward the graphene surface could not stick, so they moved away instead of forming a conductive path. This prevents the formation of short circuits and keeps the device operating even in extremely high temperature conditions.

Using electron microscopy, spectroscopy and quantum-level simulations, the team confirmed exactly how this process works at the atomic level. “After identifying other materials with similar properties, it becomes easier to produce heat-resistant chips based on this technology on a large scale,” according to Yang. “The level of 700 degrees Celsius is not the final threshold.”

According to this expert, in addition to applications for electronic devices in harsh environments or data centers on Earth, the new technology has the potential to be used for space exploration. For example, Venus has a surface temperature in the 700-degree range, and previous missions have failed in part because conventional electronics could not withstand this heat.

While the results are promising, the team says the technology is still in its infancy. Yang emphasized that memory alone is not enough to build a complete computer system. High temperature resistant logic circuits also need to be developed and integrated. Additionally, current manufacturing is done by hand on a very small scale in a laboratory, so scaling up production will take time.

“This is the first step,” Yang said. “There’s still a long way to go. But logically you can see: now it’s possible. The missing ingredient has been created.”