72. Spiderweb Inspired & Graphene Enhanced Microchips
Hosts Daniel and Farbod discuss two breakthroughs in microchip technology: a graphene-hexagonal boron nitride (HBN) heterostructure developed by the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, and spiderweb-inspired vibrational microchips created by students at Delft University of Technology. They explain how the graphene-HBN stack enables deep UV LEDs and potentially quantum computing by overcoming silicon's thermal and physical limits, while the spiderweb geometry allows precision sensors to operate at room temperature by isolating thermal noise. The episode highlights the role of molecular beam epitaxy in material synthesis and Bayesian optimization in designing bio-inspired mechanical structures.