A 'Sputnik' moment for chips: Chinese scientists aim to save Moores Law by mass-growing 2D materials that 'outclass silicon'

Date:
Thu, 16 Apr 2026 22:25:00 +0000

Description:
Chinese researchers grew 2D semiconductor films 1,000x faster using a liquid gold substrate, addressing the missing p-type material bottleneck.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Pro Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Become a Member in Seconds Unlock instant access to exclusive member features. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are
now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter The new growth method runs 1,000 times faster than conventional techniques Liquid gold and tungsten form the bilayer substrate for this process Monolayer tungsten silicon nitride films reached 1.4 by 0.7 inches in size Chinese researchers have developed a wafer-scale 2D semiconductor growth method that operates roughly 1,000x faster than conventional techniques.

The team from the Institute of Metal Research reengineered the chemical vapor deposition process by introducing a liquid gold and tungsten bilayer as the substrate. This method enabled wafer-scale growth of monolayer tungsten silicon nitride films with tunable doping properties. Article continues below You may like The future of chips: how gate-all-around design is powering the AI era and the next node How silicon photonics could reshape AI, computing, and data infrastructure A laser that can fire light pulses in one billionth
of a second is set to produce structures 1000 times stronger, 1000 times faster novel technique has applications for high-performance computing, quantum devices, and AI chip cooling Why 2D materials matter for the future
of chips The resulting films reached dimensions of roughly 1.4 x 0.7 inches, marking a step toward scalable manufacturing of high-performance 2D semiconductors.

For decades, Moore's Law predicted a doubling of computing power roughly
every two years - but as transistor dimensions approach atomic scales,
quantum effects and heat dissipation are making further miniaturization increasingly difficult.

2D semiconductors have emerged as a leading candidate for post-Moore chip materials, as the rising workloads from AI tools and large language models
are pushing current chip architectures to their limits.

Modern transistor architectures depend on the complementary pairing of n-type and p-type materials. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms &
Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

The shortage of high-performance p-type options has become a major constraint for next-generation chip design, as while many n-type 2D semiconductors are well established, achieving stable p-type counterparts remains a challenge.

"The lack of high performance p-type materials has become a critical bottleneck for the development of sub-5 nanometer node 2D semiconductors," said Zhu Mengjian from the National University of Defense Technology.

The monolayer tungsten silicon nitride films combine several key advantages for advanced transistor design. What to read next Maia 200 points to a future where laptops arent held hostage by AI This startup, backed by Bill Gates, is looking to transform computing as we know it - optical transistors could
upend Moore's Law and allow more powerful GPUs The AI data centers of 2036 wont be filled with GPUs: FuriosaAIs CEO on the future of silicon

These include strong hole mobility, high on-state current density, mechanical strength, efficient heat dissipation, and chemical stability.

The method expands single-crystal domains to sub-millimeter sizes and increases production speed from approximately 0.00004 inches over five hours to about 0.0008 inches per minute.

This represents an increase of around 1,000x compared to conventional approaches.

The research represents progress in 2D semiconductor manufacturing, but the gap between growing centimeter-scale films in a lab and mass-producing defect-free wafers remains enormous.

The gold-based substrate, while effective for research, would be
prohibitively expensive for high-volume production.

China's ambition to leapfrog existing semiconductor limitations is understandable, and this study is a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, the industry has seen many promising 2D materials fail to transition from academic papers to fabrication plants.

Whether this material follows the same path will depend on solving the scalability and cost challenges that have doomed previous options.

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