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12-inch growth of uniform MoS2 monolayer for integrated circuit manufacture

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 1324–1331 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors, such as transition metal dichalcogenides, provide an opportunity for beyond-silicon exploration. However, the lab to fab transition of 2D semiconductors is still in its preliminary stages, and it has been challenging to meet manufacturing standards of stability and repeatability. Thus, there is a natural eagerness to grow wafer-level, high-quality films with industrially acceptable scale–cost–performance metrics. Here we report an improved chemical vapour deposition synthesis method in which the controlled release of precursors and substrates predeposited with amorphous Al2O3 ensure the uniform synthesis of monolayer MoS2 as large as 12 inches while also enabling fast and non-toxic growth to reduce manufacturing costs. Transistor arrays were fabricated to further confirm the high quality of the film and its integrated circuit application potential. This work achieves the co-optimization of scale–cost–performance metrics and lays the foundation for advancing the integration of 2D semiconductors in industry-standard pilot lines.

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Fig. 1: A 12 inch growth of monolayer MoS2.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of the as-grown MoS2.
Fig. 3: First-principles simulation of MoS2 growth.
Fig. 4: Electrical characterizations on a 12 inch MoS2 wafer.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes used for simulation and data plotting are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Jiang and Z. Chen from the Southeast University for their help with the simulation of sulfur vapour distribution. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (grant no. 2021YFA1200500), by the Natural Science Foundation of China (61925402 and 62090032), in part by the Innovation Program of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission of China (grant no. 2021-01-07-00-07-E00077) and by the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission of China (grant nos 21DZ1100900 and 2018SHZDZX01). We also thank the Young Scientist project of the Ministry of Education’s innovation platform for support.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Yin Xia, Xinyu Chen, Jinchen Wei.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of ASIC and System, School of Microelectronics, Zhangjiang Fudan International Innovation Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Yin Xia, Xinyu Chen, Jinchen Wei, Shuiyuan Wang, Shiyou Chen, Zhengzong Sun, Wenzhong Bao & Peng Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Simin Wu & Minbiao Ji

  3. Shenzhen SixCarbon Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Zihan Xu

  4. Shanghai Center of Brain-inspired Intelligent Materials and Devices, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Peng Zhou

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Contributions

W.B., Z.X. and P.Z. provided guidance, advice and direction in all aspects of the project. Z.X. contributed to the experimental set-up and material synthesis. Y.X. and X.C. contributed to the material characterization, device fabrication and electrical measurement. S.C., J.W. and Z.S. contributed to the DFT calculations and discussed the synthesis dynamics. S. Wu and M.J. contributed to the SHG characterizations. All authors drafted, revised and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zihan Xu, Wenzhong Bao or Peng Zhou.

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Nature Materials thanks Vincent Tung and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–3, 5–11 and 23 show extra details of the material synthesis and characterization not described in the Methods. Supplementary Figs. 12–22 show details of device fabrication and electrical performance. Supplementary Fig. 4 and the corresponding calculation show the simulation of sulfur vapour distribution. Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 consist of the summary and comparison of our method and four commonly used synthesis methods for large-scale MoS2.

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Xia, Y., Chen, X., Wei, J. et al. 12-inch growth of uniform MoS2 monolayer for integrated circuit manufacture. Nat. Mater. 22, 1324–1331 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01671-5

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