Collaborative Research: FuSe: Monolithic 3D Integration (M3D) of 2D Materials-Based CFET Logic Elements towards Advanced Microelectronics

非技术：电子集成已被证明是现代信息社会的基础。具体来说，半导体产业的规模化是降低生产成本、提高性能和集成密度的最关键步骤之一。本课题提出了一种潜在的革命性技术，用于开发下一代半导体计算处理器。通过对基于原子厚度的二维半导体的新型集成电子器件进行原型设计，研究超薄微电子逻辑元件，不仅会导致低维材料领域的基础物理学进步，而且还会导致材料、电子器件和新型电路结构等重要研究领域的半导体技术取得重大进展。对大学生进行培训和参与，促进劳动力升级和知识传播。计划举办讲习班、专题讨论会和教程，并在国际会议上进行技术交流，以增强该项目的影响和成果。还计划与半导体公司进行合作和技术讨论，以促进技术翻译人员的协调。技术方面：提出了一项基于二维材料的互补场效应晶体管（C-FET）三维集成的跨学科研究，为下一代计算处理器提供最终解决方案。尽管近年来使用多维栅极控制技术取得了进展，但目前的材料和器件架构在集成密度和多功能性方面仍然受到基本限制。因此，材料、器件和电路级协同的突破性范式飞跃吸引了学术界和工业界的极大兴趣。将取得三个重大突破：(1)单晶二维材料具有原子厚度和自限制性质，即使在亚纳米尺度下也能保持优异的电学性能，确保最终的可扩展性。（ii） c - fet基于CMOS器件的3D异构集成概念，允许积极的单元缩放以实现紧凑的逻辑电路。（iii）将实现基于C-FET与图像传感器的单片3D集成，探索基于C-FET电路的各种集成能力的可能性。为了促进建议的突破，将实现四个目标：(1)使用最近被证明具有突破性成功的几何受限生长方法，可以大规模生产高质量的单晶二维材料。(2)基于单晶2D材料的c - fet将被制造出具有竞争力的最先进性能。(3)启用这种c - fet，可以实现逻辑单元的电路设计，包括一个全加法器和一个全减法器。(4)最终，利用这种新型微处理器可以实现一种新型编码器，该微处理器是模数转换器（ADC）的主要组成部分。通过此，将演示M3D与图像传感器的集成，以探索c - fet电路的集成可能性。该项目提出的下一代计算处理器将详细了解如何展示高质量的2D材料，C-FET和基于C-FET的电路，这是半导体技术和行业最大限度地发挥其全部潜力，最终可扩展性和栅极可控性的关键。这些目标的成功实现将为下一代计算处理器铺平新的道路，以更低的功耗满足数据爆炸时代的计算需求，从而引起人们对二维半导体科学和应用的极大兴趣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Non-Technical:Electronic integration has proven foundational to modern information society. Specifically, the up-scaling in semiconductor industry is one of the most critical steps towards reduced production cost, enhanced performance, and integration density. In this project, a potential transformative technique for developing next-generation semiconductor computing processor is proposed. By prototyping novel integrated electronic devices based on two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors with atomic thickness, ultrathin microelectronic logic element is studied, leading to not only fundamental physics advancements in low-dimensional materials community, but also major advances in semiconductor technologies synergizing vital research areas of materials, electronic devices, and novel circuity architecture. College students will be trained and involved for workforce upgrade and knowledge dissemination. Workshops, symposiums, and tutorials are planned, as well as technical exchange at international conferences to enhance the impact and findings of this project. Collaborations and technical discussions are also planned with semiconductor companies to foster technological translation workforce alignment.Technical:An interdisciplinary study on the three-dimensional (3D) integration of complementary-field effect transistors (C-FET) made by 2D material is proposed for the ultimate solution for the next-generation computing processors. Despite the recent advancement using multi-dimensional gate control technology, the current material and device architectures still encounter fundamental limitation on integration density and multifunctionality. A groundbreaking paradigm leap synergizing the material- and device- and circuit- level has thus attracted enormous interest from both academia and industry. Three significant breakthroughs will be made: (i) Single-crystalline 2D materials have atomic thickness and self-confine nature, it maintains excellent electrical property even under sub-nanometer scale, securing ultimate scalability. (ii) C-FETs are based on the concept of 3D heterogeneous integration of CMOS devices, allowing aggressive cell scaling to realize compact logic circuity. (iii) C-FET based monolithic 3D integration with image sensors will be achieved to explore the possibility of various integration capability based on the C-FET-based circuits. Four objectives will be implemented to promote the suggested breakthroughs: (1) Using the geometrically confined growth method that has recently proven groundbreaking success, high-quality single-crystal 2D materials can be manufactured at large-scale with high yield. (2) Single-crystalline 2D material-based C-FETs will be fabricated with competitive state-of-the-art performance. (3) Enabled with such C-FETs, circuit design of logic cells can be implemented including a full adder and a full substractor. (4) Ultimately, a novel encoder can be realized leveraging this new type of microprocessor, which is a main component of analog-to-digital converters (ADC). Through this, M3D integration with image sensors will be demonstrated to explore integration possibility of the C-FETs circuits. The next-generation computing processor proposed in this project will provide detailed understanding on how to demonstrate high-quality 2D materials, C-FETs, and C-FET based circuits that are key to maximizing their full potential, ultimate scalability and gate-controllability, for semiconductor technologies and industries. The successful achievement of these objectives will pave a new avenue for the next-generation computing processor that can meet the computational demands in the era of data explosion with less power consumption, leading to a considerable surge of interest in the science and application of 2D semiconductors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.