Advanced chip manufacturing

Making leading-edge integrated circuits: lithography, new transistor shapes, 3D stacking and chiplets.

China leads advanced chip manufacturing research, with 31.8% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; India is second with 16.6%.

This field publishes its leading work largely at conferences, so this technology counts journal articles, conference papers and preprints from any source, not only core journals. A paper posted as a preprint and later published can appear twice.

FirstChina31.8%

SecondIndia16.6%

1.9×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina31.8%2INIndia16.6%3USUnited States15.0%4KRSouth Korea8.7%5TWTaiwan5.4%6BEBelgium2.1%7–8JPJapan1.7%7–8IRIran1.6%9–10HKHong Kong1.3%9–10DEGermany1.3%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 390 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

About 78 papers a year. Single-year moves are noise.

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Transistor architectures (FinFET, nanosheet, gate-all-around)	74	INIndia50.9%	CNChina14.8%	USUnited States7.2%
Hybrid bonding, through-silicon vias and interconnect reliability	72	CNChina53.6%	TWTaiwan12.2%	KRSouth Korea6.9%
Lithography (EUV, photoresists, light sources)	64	CNChina41.5%	USUnited States16.6%	KRSouth Korea11.6%
Chiplets, advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration	49	CNChina31.9%	USUnited States31.3%	TWTaiwan7.0%
Compact modelling and device simulation (incl. machine learning)	36	INIndia36.3%	CNChina16.7%	USUnited States15.0%
Thermal management of stacked chips and packages	29	CNChina50.9%	USUnited States24.3%	KRSouth Korea11.0%
Memory cells and arrays (SRAM, 3D NAND, HBM, ferroelectric)	26	INIndia17.6%	KRSouth Korea15.2%	IRIran13.5%
Monolithic 3D integration and 2D or nanotube transistors	17	USUnited States37.1%	CNChina26.3%	KRSouth Korea21.1%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 26.3%37.6%+11.3 pts

INIndia 22.3%10.6%−11.8 pts

USUnited States 12.8%17.3%+4.5 pts

KRSouth Korea 8.7%8.6%−0.1 pts

TWTaiwan 5.8%4.9%−0.9 pts

BEBelgium 2.4%1.8%−0.6 pts

JPJapan 1.0%2.5%+1.5 pts

IRIran 2.3%0.9%−1.4 pts

Greyed rows rest on fewer than five papers of credit in one period.

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 199 papers in 2021–2023, 191 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (979), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina27.4%of 2026 papers have an author here
INIndia13.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States13.6%of 2026 papers have an author here
KRSouth Korea9.6%of 2026 papers have an author here
JPJapan3.2%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 57.8%25.2%+32.6

INIndia 53.0%20.7%+32.3

USUnited States 23.0%13.5%+9.5

KRSouth Korea 33.9%8.1%+25.8

TWTaiwan 21.4%6.5%+14.9

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1INNational Institute of Technology Warangal3.2%
2TWNational Yang Ming Chiao Tung University3.1%
3CNChinese Academy of SciencesGovernment lab2.8%
4CNXidian University2.6%
5BEIMECNon-profit1.7%
6CNInstitute of MicroelectronicsResearch facility1.7%
7USGeorgia Institute of Technology1.5%
8CNWuhan University1.5%
9??VIT-AP University1.4%
10CNUniversity of Chinese Academy of Sciences1.4%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	IN	US
Universities	79.0%	73.8%	99.4%	77.7%
Research facilities	8.7%	15.4%	0%	2.0%
Companies	6.4%	0.7%	0.3%	20.3%
Government labs	4.0%	10.1%	0.3%	0%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

24.4% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

KRUSSouth Korea with United States12
CNUSChina with United States9
INUSIndia with United States6
CNHKChina with Hong Kong6
CHCNSwitzerland with China6

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

Recent Advances and Trends in Advanced Packaging
IEEE Transactions on Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, 2022
711citations
Review of: "FinFET nanotransistor downscaling causes more short channel effects, less gate control, exponential increase in leakage currents, drastic process changes and unmanageable power densities"
Qeios, 2024IR
501citations
Review of: "FinFET nanotransistor, the reduction of scale causes more short channel effects, less gate control, an exponential increase in leakage currents, severe process changes, and power densities"
Qeios, 2024PT
462citations
CMOS-compatible ferroelectric NAND flash memory for high-density, low-power, and high-speed three-dimensional memory
Science Advances, 2021KR
254citations
Evolution in Lithography Techniques: Microlithography to Nanolithography
Nanomaterials, 2022IN
253citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"extreme ultraviolet lithography" OR "EUV lithography" OR "gate-all-around" OR FinFET OR "nanosheet transistor" OR "3D integration" OR chiplet OR "advanced packaging" OR "through-silicon via"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design; 3D IC and TSV technologies; Advancements in Photolithography Techniques; Low-power high-performance VLSI design; Electronic Packaging and Soldering Technologies; Semiconductor materials and devices; Ferroelectric and Negative Capacitance Devices. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 3,882
In the top 10%: 390
In the top 1%: 42
Countries with credit: 39
Credit with no known country: 6.3%

Every one of the 507 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 10 were left out as not about advanced chip manufacturing

The most cited of those left out:

Energy- and Quality-Efficient Approximate Multipliers for Neural Network and Image Processing Applications85 citations
An Ultra-Efficient Approximate Multiplier With Error Compensation for Error-Resilient Applications77 citations
Approximate Recursive Multipliers Using Low Power Building Blocks74 citations
Approximate Full-Adders: A Comprehensive Analysis42 citations
High Speed Energy Efficient Multiplier Using 20nm FinFET Technology41 citations
Efficient approximate multipliers utilizing compact and low-power compressors for error-resilient applications27 citations
Multiplier Design using Machine Learning Alogorithms for Energy Efficiency26 citations
HPR-Mul: An Area and Energy-Efficient High-Precision Redundancy Multiplier by Approximate Computing24 citations
FASTA: Revisiting Fully Associative Memories in Computer Microarchitecture18 citations
An efficient approximate multiplier: Design, error analysis and application15 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method