A state-owned nuclear technology company in China has announced that it is starting mass production of a world-first chip that can detect radiation. The announcement adds to the long list of semiconductor related breakthroughs that have come from the China in the past few years.
     The claim of production of chips that can detect X-ray and gamma radiation has come from the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). According to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the claim was made by the company in a statement that was released on the CNNC WeChat channel.
     According to the SCMP report, CNNC claims that its chip can “measure dose rates of X- and gamma-ray radiation ranging from 100 nanoSievert per hour to 10 milliSievert per hour.” The Chinese company also claims that its chip can be used for a broad number of applications. These include monitoring radiation emissions in all types of settings such as nuclear-related workplaces like reactors, weapon plants, and more. Further, it can also be used in places with proximity to radiation zones to keep a tab on the rise or fall of levels.
     A normal flight on a commercial plane can lead to a typical dose rate of roughly three thousand nanoSievert per hour. In a natural setting, it is around sixty to two hundred nanoSievert per hour.
     One of the important features of the chip is that it is quite small. It measures just 15 mm by 15 mm by 3 mm. The small size does not hinder its performance or its abilities and CNNC says that it can be compared to a Geiger-Muller counter for efficiency.
     The small size will enable the chip to be inserted into smartphones or even attached to unmanned aerial vehicles or ground drones. The phones, or drones, can be used as smart devices for measuring radiation at the desired places.
     The chip can function on the extremely low power of one milliwatt and it can detect energies from fifty kiloelectron volts to two mega electron-volts.
     CNNC also states that the whole development of the chip from design to production has been carried out in its factories, by its own team of engineers. This is also a significant development because the U.S. had been sanctioning companies from supplying semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China and Chinese firms.
     Earlier this year, analysts predicted that China might be able to overtake the U.S. in important sectors such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, quantum computing, nuclear power, and material science. Analysts at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank based in Washington, came to this conclusion after closely tracking the progress and innovation capability made by forty Chinese firms.
     For a long time, China had been considered a copycat in innovation with good reason. However, in recent years, the situation has changed. China has become the second-largest economy in the world, and the Chinese government and companies have invested heavily in research and development of high-value technologies. All of these factors have resulted in China’s rising dominance in several key areas.