Researchers devise a way to grow 3 atom thick semiconducting films with wafer scale homogeneity

A team of researchers at Cornell University has developed a technique that allows for growing 3 atom thick semiconducting films on wafers, up to 10 centimeters across. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes their technique and the ways it might be used to create ultra-tiny circuits. Tobin Marks and Mark Hersam of Northwestern University offer a News & Views perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

As the search continues for ways to allow for creating smaller and smaller circuits, researchers have turned to what are known as 2D materials, those that are just an atom thick—which at this point, appears to be a physical limit. Testing of such materials has proven fruitful and scientists are convinced that someday soon, they will be used in all manner of electronic gizmos. The thing holding them up right now is a means of mass producing them in sizes that are large enough to be useful while remaining homogenous across their entire surface (having spatial uniformity). In this new effort, the researchers have found success by modifying a process known as metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) to create two types of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs)—tungsten disulfide and molybdenum disulfide. One layer of the material is three atoms thick and it was created without having to resort to using sticky-tape, and unlike graphene, it is a semiconductor.