Two-Dimensional Materials, the Ultimate Solution for Future Electronics and Very-Large-Scale Integrated Circuits

Abstract

Highlights

With the incessant down-scaling of electronics, traditional semiconductors like Si are encountered with insurmountable hurdles to maintain performance increase without bringing about additional issues of power consumption escalating, in this context, two-dimensional (2D) materials emerge as superior candidates to supersede or complement Si attributed to their marvelous electronic properties to further sustain the Moore’s law life.

2D materials-based electronics in More Moore and More than Moore’ regimes have attained promising achievements and showcased monumental potentials applications in low power consumption integrated circuits

2D materials-based integrated circuits have gone through a promising development, evolving from small-scale integrated circuits (ICs) to full-functioned processors. Whereas enormous endeavors are waited to be dedicated to realize large-scale ICs attributed to lack of large-scale 2D materials of electronic qualities and immature fabricating techniques.

The relentless down-scaling of electronics grands the modern integrated circuits (ICs) with the high speed, low power dissipation and low cost, fulfilling diverse demands of modern life. Whereas, with the semiconductor industry entering into sub-10 nm technology nodes, degrading device performance and increasing power consumption give rise to insurmountable roadblocks confronted by modern ICs that need to be conquered to sustain the Moore law’s life. Bulk semiconductors like prevalent Si are plagued by seriously degraded carrier mobility as thickness thinning down to sub-5 nm, which is imperative to maintain sufficient gate electrostatic controllability to combat the increasingly degraded short channel effects. Nowadays, the emergence of two-dimensional (2D) materials opens up new gateway to eschew the hurdles laid in front of the scaling trend of modern IC, mainly ascribed to their ultimately atomic thickness, capability to maintain carrier mobility with thickness thinning down, dangling-bonds free surface, wide bandgaps tunability and feasibility to constitute diverse heterostructures. Blossoming breakthroughs in discrete electronic device, such as contact engineering, dielectric integration and vigorous channel-length scaling, or large circuits arrays, as boosted yields, improved variations and full-functioned processor fabrication, based on 2D materials have been achieved nowadays, facilitating 2D materials to step under the spotlight of IC industry to be treated as the most potential future successor or complementary counterpart of incumbent Si to further sustain the down-scaling of modern IC.