TSMC researchers achieve 0.42-nanometer breakthrough in transistor tech

Silicon has been the backbone of the semiconductor industry for decades, but it’s running into a wall. Atoms are only so small, and silicon transistors are approaching the point where physics starts saying “no.” A new breakthrough from TSMC and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) suggests there might be a detour around that wall. The research team fabricated a monolayer MoS₂ top-gate transistor featuring an epitaxial interface layer just 0.42 nanometers thick. To put that in perspective, a single strand of human DNA is about 2.5 nanometers wide. This layer is roughly one-sixth of that. How a layer thinner than an atom chain changes the game Problems like electron scattering, where charge carriers bounce off imperfections at the interface, and leakage current, where electricity sneaks through paths it shouldn’t, have plagued efforts to build practical 2D transistors. The TSMC-NYCU team’s solution was elegant: deposit an ultrathin epitaxial aluminum layer onto a monolayer of MoS₂ grown via chemical vapor deposition, then oxidize it to create a buffer of aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃). On top of that buffer, the team applied a high-κ hafnium oxide gate dielectric. The combined sta...