Semiconductor and photonics research and funding
Free, cited research on chiplets, silicon photonics, lithography and wide-bandgap devices, from process papers, patents and federal research awards.
Semiconductors & Photonics: the research
Chipmaking advances show up first as process papers and patents, and the funding behind them runs through federal research programs as well as company spending. KPsphere follows papers, patents, federal grant and contract awards, measurement data and company filings to show which techniques are moving from the lab toward production.
Coverage includes chiplets and heterogeneous integration, 3D chip stacking, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, extreme ultraviolet lithography, gallium nitride and wide-bandgap semiconductors, RISC-V, neuromorphic chips, in-memory computing and optical computing.
The public reports below are AI-assisted research drawn from the databases shown here: AI models search those sources and draft the analysis from them, an automated check tests key claims against the same evidence, and key findings link to their sources. The AI is instructed to say where the evidence is thin.
Sources searched for this sector
- Papers, preprints and technical reports
- OpenAlex, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, DOAJ, DOE OSTI
- Funding awards
- NSF awards, USAspending.gov, Grants.gov, UKRI Gateway to Research, OpenAIRE
- Patents
- Google Patents, USPTO
- Company filings
- SEC EDGAR
- Measurement data
- NIST data repository
- Code
- GitHub
Latest Semiconductors & Photonics research
The newest of 27 public research reports in this sector, each linked to the papers, patents and awards behind it.
The particle accelerator that could replace tin-droplet lasers as the EUV light source for chipmaking
Accelerator-driven free-electron lasers (FELs) are the only extreme ultraviolet (EUV) source concept in the retrieved literature with published designs above one…
Gallium oxide power transistors: a melt-grown crystal that could undercut silicon carbide in EV and grid chips
Gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3) has a credible path to undercut silicon carbide (SiC) on wafer cost for high-voltage power chips because it grows from a melt the way silicon…
The glass wafer that beams a laser straight into a chip stack: co-packaged optics interposers
Glass has moved from a passive packaging substrate to an active optical layer in co-packaged optics, and the demonstrations that matter are now coming from packaging…
The Glass Slab Under a Chip That Replaces the Plastic It Was Built On
Glass core substrates — thin sheets of borosilicate or alkali-free aluminosilicate glass replacing the organic (epoxy/resin) core inside advanced semiconductor packages…
The Chip That Cools Itself With Microscopic Rivers Cut Into Its Own Back
A Chinese-led group has demonstrated silicon-embedded, jet-fed manifold microchannels removing 3,000 W cm⁻² of heat flux — roughly an order of magnitude beyond what any…
The Diamond Layer Glued Onto a Chip That Drains Its Heat Sideways
The single most consequential development in this field is not the diamond itself — it is that room-temperature bonding has replaced growth as the dominant integration…
The Diamond Layer Glued Under a Power Chip That Pulls Heat Out Faster Than Copper
The bottleneck in diamond thermal management has moved from the diamond to the glue. Bulk chemical vapour deposition (CVD) polycrystalline diamond routinely exceeds…
The Sputtered Tellurium Film That Builds Transistors on Top of Finished Chips at 300°C
The single most important finding of this report: elemental tellurium has quietly become the only p-type semiconductor that simultaneously satisfies all four constraints…
The Coolant Channels Etched Straight Into AI Chips to Stop Them From Melting
The single most important finding in this report: embedded microfluidic cooling — coolant channels etched directly into the silicon of an AI accelerator, typically on…
Recent daily briefings on Semiconductors & Photonics
- The chip flipped upside down to feed power from its back: backside power delivery in 2nm-class processors
- The processor three atoms thick: a 5,900-transistor RISC-V chip built from 2D molybdenum disulfide
- The hair-thin water channels etched into the back of a chip to pull heat out at the transistor
- The Molten Gallium Droplet That Rewires a Chip's Interconnects On Command
- The Cryo-CMOS Chip That Runs at 4 Kelvin So Qubits Don't Have to Shout Through a Cable
- The Nickel Grain Inside a Chip That Fires a Sound Pulse to Move Light
Open federal contracts and grants to browse
Open SAM.gov contract notices and Grants.gov opportunities, listed by agency and industry code. Each list covers its whole agency or code, not only Semiconductors & Photonics work, so check each official notice before acting. The lists are KPsphere AI ScoutBOT’s free public directory, refreshed nightly.
- NAICS 334413: semiconductor and related device manufacturingSAM.gov
- NAICS 541715: research and development in the physical, engineering and life sciencesSAM.gov
- DARPA contract noticesSAM.gov
- All open federal contract notices, by NAICS code, agency and set-asideSAM.gov
- All open federal grants, by agencyGrants.gov
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The public reports above are free to read. A subscription adds research on Semiconductors & Photonics, not published on the site.
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Semiconductors & Photonics research: common questions
Who is funding semiconductor research in 2026?
Public funding for semiconductor research is recorded in award databases, and those are the records KPsphere reads: NSF awards, federal grants and contracts on USAspending.gov and Grants.gov, UK Research and Innovation projects, and European projects in OpenAIRE. Where a report finds awards on its topic, it names them and links to the award record, so the funder and the amount can be checked at the source.
Where can I find SBIR and STTR awards for semiconductor?
SBIR and STTR awards are federal awards, so they appear in the federal award data KPsphere searches, including NSF award records and contracts and grants on USAspending.gov, when they match the topic a report is researching. KPsphere does not query SBIR.gov directly, so for a complete list of one agency's SBIR or STTR awards, SBIR.gov remains the primary source.
Which semiconductor startups are raising money?
Public-company activity shows up in SEC EDGAR filings (8-K, 10-K, 10-Q and S-1), and company work shows up in patent filings and federal contract awards. Private funding rounds are largely invisible to open databases, so deep-research reports add a web search for company announcements and keep a result only when it comes with a live source link.
What are the latest semiconductor breakthroughs?
The newest public Semiconductors & Photonics reports are listed on this page, newest first. The most recent item in this sector was published on Oct 9, 2026. Key findings in each one link to their sources (recent papers and preprints, patents, awards and filings), so a claimed breakthrough can be checked against the published result.
What does KPsphere cover in Semiconductors & Photonics?
Coverage includes chiplets and heterogeneous integration, 3D chip stacking, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, extreme ultraviolet lithography, gallium nitride and wide-bandgap semiconductors, RISC-V, neuromorphic chips, in-memory computing and optical computing. The research is AI-assisted: AI models search those sources and draft the analysis from them, an automated check tests key claims against the same evidence, and key findings link to their sources.
Is KPsphere's semiconductor research free?
Yes. Every report listed on this page is free to read, and so is the daily briefing, one email each morning rotating across all twelve sectors, Semiconductors & Photonics among them. The paid Sector Watch plan, $50 a month, adds subscriber-only research on one sector you choose: Four subscriber-only deep-research reports a month on your sector, plus a monthly sector landscape.
All twelve sectors
The same research, one field at a time.
AI & Machine Learning
Model architectures, training methods, inference hardware, AI safety research
28 research reportsQuantum Computing
Qubit platforms, error correction, quantum networking, post-quantum cryptography
29 research reportsBiotechnology
Gene editing, synthetic biology, protein design, biomanufacturing
31 research reportsAdvanced Energy
Batteries, grid storage, fusion, solar, nuclear, hydrogen
28 research reportsSpace Technology
Launch systems, satellites, propulsion, in-orbit manufacturing
32 research reportsCybersecurity
Offensive and defensive tooling, cryptography, critical-infrastructure security
29 research reportsRobotics
Autonomy, manipulation, humanoids, drones, industrial automation
30 research reportsAdvanced Materials
Metamaterials, superconductors, composites, coatings, nanomaterials
28 research reportsNext-Gen Communications
6G, optical networking, satellite comms, spectrum and antennas
30 research reportsNeurotechnology
Brain-computer interfaces, neural implants, neuroimaging, neuromodulation
27 research reportsClimate Technology
Carbon capture, climate modelling, adaptation tech, sustainable materials
27 research reportsSemiconductors & Photonics
Chip fabrication, photonics, packaging, lithography, novel architectures
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