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Materials science

Screen printing of 2D semiconductors

Nature volume 544, pages 167–168 (2017)Cite this article

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Atomically thin semiconductors have been made by transferring the oxide 'skin' of a liquid metal to substrates. This opens the way to the low-cost mass production of 2D semiconductors at the sizes needed for electronics applications.

The integrated circuits used in today's electronic devices rely on the patterning of materials by photolithography1, a modern adaptation of the 221-year-old lithography printing technique2. The success of photolithography in creating complex circuits over hundreds of square centimetres has motivated the development of other techniques for patterning materials on the micro- and nanoscale, many of which are also inspired by older methods. These include direct stamping, 'dip-pen' lithography, nanoimprint lithography and ink-jet patterning3. Writing in Nature Communications, Carey et al.4 describe a technique for generating patterns of atomically thin semiconductors that can be seen as a new form of screen printing — a technique many centuries older than lithography5.

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Figure 1: A method for making atomically thin layers of gallium(II) sulfide.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Young Duck Kim is in the Department of Physics and Center for Humanities and Sciences, Kyung Hee University, Seoul 02447, Republic of Korea.,

    Young Duck Kim

  2. James Hone is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.,

    James Hone

Authors
  1. Young Duck Kim
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  2. James Hone
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Correspondence to Young Duck Kim or James Hone.

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Kim, Y., Hone, J. Screen printing of 2D semiconductors. Nature 544, 167–168 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21908

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