We got used to have faster, smaller and more power-efficient gadgets every year. This fantastic progress has been enabled by miniaturization of silicon transistors (so-called Moore’s law). Nowadays, the classical scaling is reaching its physical limits with critical dimensions as small as just a few nanometers. This explains the growing interest towards novel materials that can potentially replace silicon in future high performance electronic devices. Two-dimensional materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted significant interest due to their unique electronic, optical and mechanical properties. Field effect transistors with channels made of atomically thin 2D semiconductors are less prone to short channel effects which allows device scaling to a few nanometer scale. Due to the absence of surface dangling bonds 2D materials can be assembled in heterostructures with sharp interfaces and specific band alignments paving the way to fabrication of novel low power devices.
While exceptional properties of TMDs have been demonstrated on mechanically exfoliated flakes (using the Nobel-winning scotch tape technique) large scale integration of these materials into sophisticated devices remains very challenging. Due to the extreme sensitivity and fragility of 2D crystals in comparison to classical bulk materials, all processing technologies used in semiconductor fabs (e.g. deposition, etching, cleaning) have to be reexamined. The goal of the PULSE2D project is to develop plasma-based technology for cleaning, functionalization and etching of TMD materials with atomic-scale precision (Figure 1).
Application of developed processes will allow integration of 2D TMDs on full wafers in semiconductor fabs leading to fabrication of new generations of high-performance devices.
