By V Ramgopal Rao
A 3-nanometre transistor is no longer science fiction; it is inside the phone in your pocket. Yet classical silicon is gasping. The next leap will come from nanoelectronics: new materials, new device physics, and integration at atomic precision. This includes today’s scaled CMOS, powering everything from AI chips to edge devices. This is not just about making chips smaller. It is about making them smarter, cheaper, and greener.
The global nanoelectronics market, encompassing scaled CMOS semiconductors, sensors, and IoT edge devices, is heading toward $1 trillion by 2030. Nanosensors already detect a single virus particle. Ultra-low-power chips enable IoT networks that run for ten years on a coin cell. Flexible electronics printed on plastic will turn any surface into a display or a health monitor. From electric-vehicle powertrains to satellite constellations, every high-growth sector rides this wave.
India spends over $25 billion every year importing chips and sensors. That number rose 18% last year alone. The India Semiconductor Mission is building fabs and assembly plants, but fabs alone will not stop the outflow. Real sovereignty lies in owning the frontier: compound semiconductors, MEMS sensors, integrated photonics, and IoT edge intelligence. These are precisely the areas where Indian research groups have published world-class papers for a decade. Redirect at least one-tenth of the semiconductor mission’s budget to nanoelectronics R&D and we can create billions of dollars in high-value exports by 2035 while slashing the import bill.
Science funding is the bottleneck. India’s gross expenditure on R&D remains stuck below 0.7% of GDP, lowest among even the BRICS countries. Our universities and institutes run nano labs on shoestring budgets. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) was created to change that, but it needs to move faster and bolder when it comes to semiconductor R&D investments. A dedicated funding window for nanoelectronics and sensor missions, split between large consortia and high-risk academic projects, would ignite hundreds of translational efforts overnight. Without this investment in basic science, we risk staying on the assembly line while others invent the future.
Talent must follow money. We produce 1.5 million engineers annually, yet most have never seen a clean room. Curricula must fuse materials science, device physics, and data systems from the second year. Leading institutes such as BITS Pilani and IITs are already doing it. Industry apprenticeships, faculty sabbaticals in fabs, and mandatory six-month internships should become non-negotiable.
Ideas must reach the market. Ninety percent of Indian patents gather dust. Nanoelectronics is capital-intensive; the valley of death is brutal. We need pre-competitive consortia, university-linked seed funds that write the first crore without revenue projections, and government-sponsored multi-project wafer runs for startups. When an IIT Bombay team’s MEMS-based explosive trace detector, capable of detecting RDX at nanogram levels in under ten seconds, moved from lab prototype to licensed industry product and real-world deployment at airports, it proved the model works. We do not need five such stories. We need five hundred.
India has a narrow window to lead in sensors and IoT edge intelligence, two segments where software strength meets hardware opportunity. A single breakthrough sensor designed in Bengaluru and fabricated in Gujarat can secure borders, monitor pollution, or enable precision farming across a billion devices without sending royalty dollars abroad. Our domestic market alone is large enough to de-risk early commercialisation and attract global partners.
The global chessboard is being redrawn. America controls design tools, Taiwan owns leading-edge nodes, Europe dominates compound semiconductors. India can own the next wave if we fund science generously, train ruthlessly, and translate relentlessly. The devices are shrinking. Our ambition must not.
