[News] China Achieved Breakthrough in High-Performance 2D Semiconductor Materials

Recently, a joint research team from the National University of Defense Technology and the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made a major breakthrough in wafer-scale growth and controllable doping of a new class of high-performance two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor materials. This development is expected to provide critical material and device support for domestically developed chip technologies in the post-Moore era.

If chips are likened to “cities,” transistors can be seen as the “buildings” within them. As transistor channel lengths shrink below 10nm, the “building density” becomes excessively high, resulting in an increasingly “crowded city.” This leads to two major challenges: short-channel effects and the “power wall.” The former causes current leakage and instability, while the latter results in rising heat generation and power consumption.

“These two challenges combined make it increasingly difficult for traditional silicon-based chips to achieve further performance gains, as Moore’s Law approaches its physical limits. Exploring new semiconductor materials has therefore become imperative,” said Zhu Mengjian, corresponding author of the study and a researcher at the National University of Defense Technology.

Due to their atomic thickness, high carrier mobility, tunable bandgap, and strong electrostatic gate control, 2D semiconductors are widely regarded as key candidates for next-generation chip materials in the post-Moore era. However, intrinsic issues such as defect-induced spontaneous electron doping and Fermi-level pinning have led to a long-standing imbalance in existing 2D material systems—namely, an abundance of high-performance n-type materials but a scarcity of high-performance p-type counterparts.

“Transistors in chips require complementary pairing of n-type and p-type materials. The lack of high-performance p-type materials has become a critical bottleneck for the development of sub-5nm 2D semiconductor technologies and represents a key frontier in global semiconductor competition,” Zhu added.

To address these challenges, Zhu Mengjian’s team collaborated with researchers Ren Wencai and Xu Chuan from the Institute of Metal Research to develop a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method using a liquid gold/tungsten dual-metal thin film as the substrate. This approach enables the controlled growth of wafer-scale, doping-tunable monolayer WSi₂N₄ films.

The new fabrication method allows the single-crystal domain size of the 2D material to reach sub-millimeter levels, while achieving a growth rate approximately 1,000 times higher than previously reported in the literature. In terms of transistor performance, monolayer WSi₂N₄ exhibits high hole mobility, large on-state current density, strong mechanical robustness, efficient heat dissipation, and excellent chemical stability—delivering outstanding overall performance among comparable 2D materials.

The research result indicated that monolayer WSi₂N₄ holds strong potential for application in 2D semiconductor CMOS integrated circuits and may open up new pathways for next-generation chip technologies beyond Moore’s Law.

(Photo credit: FREEPIK)