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Taiwan team successfully developed monoatomic diodes with a thickness of only 0.7 nm
The breakthrough in the process of integrated circuit, the team composed of Professor Wu Zhonglin from the Department of Physics of the University of Science and Dr. Chen Jiahao from the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, successfully developed the selenization of a single atomic layer thickness (0.7 nm) with excellent logic switching characteristics. Tungsten diode. According to the team, the transmission electrons responsible for the operation are limited to the single-atom layer, which will greatly reduce the interference and increase the operation speed. If it is applied to digital devices in the future, the operation speed is expected to be thousands of times and 10,000 times higher than that of today's computers.
 
In the market, TSMC is developing a 3 nm investment plan. The new 3 nm process plant is expected to begin mass production in the first phase of 2022. Scientists in the laboratory are actively looking for transistor materials that can be scaled down to the atomic scale (less than 1 nm). I hope that digital devices will become thinner and more efficient.
 
Two-dimensional materials compressed to the atomic level have many unique physical and chemical properties, such as the material mythological graphene (Graphene), which is the first two-dimensional material found to be only carbon atom thickness, and has excellent electrical conductivity. In addition, due to the extremely thin thickness, different types of two-dimensional materials can be exhibited through the stack to exhibit different functionalities.
 
But Wu Zhonglin, a professor of successful university physics, said that graphene is not easy to become a semiconductor material, so the team decided to use another transition metal chalcogenide (TMDs) of the same two-dimensional material as graphene: tungsten diselenide (WSe 2), and successfully developed a tungsten selenide diode with a thickness of only 0.7 nm and excellent logic switching characteristics.
 
Compared with the traditional silicon semiconductor materials, Wu Zhonglin said that the thickness of the tungsten selenide diode has exceeded the three-nm process limit, which can fully meet the thinner, smaller and faster requirements of the next-generation integrated circuit.
 
In the experiment, the team also used a two-dimensional composite of a single layer of tungsten selenide semiconductor and barium ferrite oxide to demonstrate that the electrical properties of the two-dimensional material can be controlled to turn on and off the current to produce 1 and 0 without the need for a metal electrode. The logic signal can greatly reduce the circuit process and design complexity, avoiding short circuit, leakage or mutual interference.
 
Although the research results are limited to the laboratory, if the monoatomic layer diodes are combined into various integrated circuits in the future, the transfer electrons responsible for the operation are limited to the single atomic layer, which can greatly increase the operation. The speed is expected to exceed the current computer computing speed by a thousand times or even 10,000 times, and the energy consumption is very small, which can meet the large computing requirements of artificial intelligence chips or machine learning, or the mobile phone can be used for up to one month in a single charge.

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