About a week ago, a viral post declared that on July 19, China had “killed the silicon wafer.”

The claim was explosive: a breakthrough in a new semiconductor material called indium selenide (InSe) had supposedly rendered the entire Western chip ecosystem — from Intel’s FABs to TSMC’s foundries and America’s sanctions — obsolete overnight.

China, the post argued, had not just won the chip war; it had “exited the battlefield” by mastering a new law of atomic physics.

Like many things on the internet, this narrative was a dramatic oversimplification. But it was pointing at a real and significant event. On July 18, researchers from Peking University and Renmin University of China published an article detailing a novel method for the mass production of high-quality InSe wafers.

While this achievement won’t kill silicon tomorrow, it represents a genuine strategic leap. It signals that while the West has been focused on blockading the current technological paradigm, China is aggressively working to invent the next one.

Assessing the accuracy of the viral claims versus the scientific reality reveals a more nuanced but equally profound story about the future of technology, geopolitics, and the very materials that will power our world.

Let’s unpack what this breakthrough means for China, the West, and the future of semiconductors. Then, we’ll close with my Product of the Week: the HyperX QuadCast 2 S microphone.

Inside China’s InSe Wafer Breakthrough

The core of the social media post gets one thing right: the central challenge in producing InSe has been a problem of atomic-level precision known as stoichiometry.

InSe is a two-dimensional (2D) material, meaning it can form stable layers just a few atoms thick. For it to function as a high-performance semiconductor, it requires a perfect one-to-one atomic ratio of indium and selenium. Any deviation creates defects that ruin its electronic properties. Unlike silicon, which is a robust, forgiving element that can be polished and doped into submission, InSe is unforgiving.