Chinese-Origin MIT Professor, Who Once Faced Charges In U.S For Undisclosed Chinese Links, 'Discovers' New Semiconductor Material 'Superior' To Silicon

A team of researchers led by Gang Chen, a Chinese-origin MIT mechanical engineering professor and nanotechnologist, have published a paper in a Science journal demonstrating that a material known as cubic boron arsenide is the best semiconductor ever found and maybe the best possible one.

According to the paper, cubic boron arsenide, while providing high mobility to both electrons and holes and excellent thermal conductivity, also overcomes the limitations of Silicon. The earlier experiments by the researchers showed that the thermal conductivity of cubic boron arsenide is almost ten times greater than that of Silicon.

While Silicon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth that in its pure form, has become the foundation of much of modern technology (it is used in applications ranging from solar cells to computer chips), its properties as a semiconductor are far from ideal. Silicon has good electron mobility but poor hole mobility, and other materials such as gallium arsenide, widely used for lasers, similarly have good mobility for electrons but not for holes.

Cubic boron arsenide's extraordinary thermal conductivity makes it a promising candidate for next-generation electronics, according to the paper by Chen and his co-authors.

While cubic boron arsenide has so far been made and tested in small, lab-scale batches, it remains to be seen if it can be produced on a scalable basis.

Gang Chen, the lead researcher, was charged by U.S authorities for allegedly hiding connections to China, but the charges against him were dropped earlier this year.

Gang Chen, born in China and a naturalized U.S. citizen, serves as a professor and researcher at MIT. He is the Director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory and Director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC).

In January 2022, a U.S court approved the government's motion to dismiss all charges against Gang Chen nearly one year to the day after he was indicted on charges relating to his alleged failure to disclose relationships and funding from Chinese entities.

Gang Chen was accused of holding various appointments with China designed to promote China's technological and scientific development by providing advice and expertise – sometimes directly to Chinese government officials – and often in exchange for financial compensation.

The U.S Department of Energy (DoE) has given Gang Chen $19 million for research since 2013.

When Gang Chen applied for and received a grant from the U.S Department of Energy to fund his research, he was accused of failing to disclose that he served in several advisory roles for China and Chinese entities as required by the DOE, prosecutors had argued.

Since 2013, Gang Chen allegedly received approximately $29 million of foreign funding, including $19 million from the PRC's Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).

Gang Chen was also charged with failing to disclose to the IRS in his 2018 tax return that he maintained a bank account in the PRC with more than $10,000 in 2018.

In July 2019, Gang Chen was quoted in Nature magazine as being critical of the U.S. government's increased scrutiny of researchers with ties to China.

Gang Chen was slapped with wire fraud charges, failing to file a foreign bank account report (FBAR) and making a false statement in a tax return.