A 0.42-nanometer breakthrough could push transistors beyond silicon

A working transistor requires an extremely thin insulating layer known as the gate dielectric. This layer sits above the semiconductor and helps control the movement of electrons. As transistors shrink, making this insulating layer thinner can improve electrical control. The difficulty is that adding such layers to atomically thin semiconductors can disturb the delicate interface between the materials. That disruption can scatter electrons and erase some of the performance gains engineers are trying to achieve.

For years, researchers have therefore faced a difficult tradeoff. They could strengthen control over the transistor gate, or they could protect the mobility of the charge carriers moving through the device. Achieving both at once has been much harder.

Researchers at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan, working with TSMC Corporate Research, Taiwan, have now demonstrated a new way to address this problem by focusing on the interface itself.

The work, published in Nature Electronics, shows that carefully controlling the atomic boundary between a semiconductor and its insulating layer can allow the dielectric to be made extremely thin while maintaining strong electrical performance. Rather than searching for a completely different semiconductor, the researchers concentrated on the narrow region where the two materials meet, an area only a few atoms thick.

Instead of changing either the semiconductor or the gate dielectric, the NYCU researchers redesigned the interface connecting them.

The team first placed an ultrathin epitaxial aluminum layer directly onto monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). They then carefully oxidized the aluminum, producing an aluminum oxide layer about 0.42 nanometers thick. After that, they added the high κ hafnium oxide gate dielectric.

Despite being only a fraction of a nanometer thick, the engineered interface performs two important jobs.

First, it creates a smooth and continuous surface that allows the hafnium oxide to grow more uniformly over the MoS2. Second, it works as an atomic buffer that limits unwanted electrical interactions between the dielectric and the semiconductor. This protection helps electrons continue moving efficiently through the transistor channel.

In this design, the interface does more than simply keep two materials apart. It becomes a functional part of the transistor and helps the materials work together more effectively.
Using the new interface design, the researchers fabricated short-channel top-gate transistors from CVD-grown monolayer MoS2. The devices had an equivalent oxide thickness of roughly one nanometer.

Testing showed low leakage current, minimal hysteresis, and maximum transconductance of 0.45 mS μm-1 in transistors with channels measuring about 100 nanometers.

More importantly, the devices demonstrated a combination that has been difficult to achieve in atomically thin transistors: very thin dielectric scaling, strong electrostatic control, and sustained carrier transport.

Because the researchers used CVD-grown monolayer MoS2 rather than mechanically exfoliated flakes, they believe the approach brings the technology closer to materials and processes that could eventually be suitable for wafer-scale manufacturing.

The findings also point to a broader change in the way semiconductor researchers think about transistor design.

For decades, much of the effort to improve transistors has centered on discovering better semiconductor materials or making devices smaller. As transistor components approach atomic dimensions, however, the interfaces separating different materials become increasingly important.

These regions may be only a few atoms thick, yet they can strongly influence how well the materials on either side work together. The new results add to growing evidence that controlling these atomic interfaces could become as important as developing new semiconductor materials themselves.

 

Image – Researchers from NYCU and TSMC show that redefining the atomic boundary between materials can address a major engineering barrier restricting the development of next-generation semiconductor devices. Courtesy of: Springer Nature.

 

For more information:

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
https://www.nycu.edu.tw/nycu/en/index

New analog memory may make smart devices even smarter

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed electro-thermo-chemical random-access memory, a technology that uses localized heating and electrical pulses to store a range of analog values instead of binary ones and zeros, making future electronics more energy efficient.

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Penn State, Kurt J. Lesker Company partner to advance atomic-scale processing

Penn State and Kurt J. Lesker Company have launched a strategic partnership to advance atomic-scale materials processing for semiconductors, advanced packaging, quantum technologies and photonics. Central to the collaboration is the new Kurt J. Lesker Company Atomic Scale Processing Center of Excellence, known as ASPIRE, at Penn State. The center will combine the company’s equipment and process expertise with Penn State’s nanofabrication, materials research and characterization capabilities to support next-generation technology development and workforce training. The partnership was formally launched Sept. 9 with the signing of a memorandum of understanding and a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Millennium Science

KJLC is a Pennsylvania-based company specializing in vacuum science and equipment used to create and shape extremely thin layers of materials. These thin films are essential components in semiconductors and other advanced technologies.

A central goal of the partnership is to develop and validate atomic-scale processing recipes, or detailed instructions for creating thin films with specific properties. These recipes could ultimately be shared with KJLC customers and academic researchers around the world.

The partnership builds on a research relationship, demonstrating the world’s first ferroelectric aluminum-scandium nitride thin films grown by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition. The achievement highlights the role of atomic scale processing in enabling next-generation semiconductor, quantum and advanced electronic technologies, according to KJLC and Penn State leadership.

The most recent collaboration will focus on two highly precise processes: atomic layer deposition, which builds thin films a few atoms at a time, and atomic layer etching, which removes material with similar precision. That level of control is critical because even tiny differences in a material’s thickness or composition can affect how well a device performs.

“Few universities offer the combination of research expertise, characterization capabilities and nanofabrication infrastructure available at Penn State,” said Joshua Robinson, director of Penn State’s Materials Research Institute and professor of materials science and engineering. “Coupling those strengths with Kurt J. Lesker Company’s technologies and process engineers creates a unique environment where new ideas can benefit scientific discovery and advance technology development.”

Under the agreement, KJLC will loan three ultra-high purity atomic scale processing tools to the Nanofabrication Laboratory. One 200-millimeter atomic scale processing system integrates both atomic layer deposition and atomic layer etching, enabling researchers to deposit and etch materials with near-atomic precision. Together, the systems are valued at approximately $4.45 million. KJLC will retain ownership and responsibility for maintaining them. Penn State researchers will have access to the three systems for University research, joint projects with KJLC and work conducted for Penn State’s user community.

“From a business perspective, Penn State was the natural choice because of our long-standing relationship and shared commitment to advancing scientific discovery,” said Kurt Lesker IV, president and CEO of Kurt J. Lesker Company. “Through the Materials Research Institute, Penn State brings world-class researchers, advanced nanofabrication capabilities, and a collaborative environment where industry and academia work side by side to solve important challenges. Together, we are creating a center of excellence that will accelerate innovation, develop future talent, and strengthen leadership in semiconductors, advanced packaging and next generation technologies.”

The partnership will also establish workforce development programming for undergraduate and graduate students and early-career professionals, with potential activities including internships and graduate research support.

“KJLC already has considerable training programs in vacuum technologies and deposition,” Robinson said. “By connecting that industry expertise with the research happening at Penn State, we can create new training opportunities for students and the broader workforce.”

Such training opportunities will include learning from Penn State researchers and KJLC engineers, who will use the loaned equipment to develop and test new materials and processing methods for applications including quantum technologies, micro- and nano- scale sensors and mechanical devices, biomedical coatings, advanced packaging and flexible electronics.

“The future of advanced technology will be built one atomic layer at a time,” Lesker said. “By combining Penn State’s research leadership with Kurt J. Lesker Company’s vacuum and thin film expertise in atomic scale processing, we can accelerate the development of new materials and manufacturing processes that enable breakthroughs in semiconductor packaging, quantum technologies, photonics and advanced electronics. Just as importantly, this partnership helps bridge the gap between scientific discovery and real-world application while preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers who will drive innovation for decades to come.”

Penn State and KJLC researchers will use the systems to develop recipes specifying the materials, temperatures, timing and other conditions needed to consistently create a particular thin film or structure. The partners will develop a growing library of standardized atomic-scale processing recipes that can be shared across the research community and ultimately deployed on KJLC platforms worldwide. KJLC will also provide Penn State access to 38 processes it has already developed, and Penn State researchers will be able to draw on KJLC’s principal scientist and other technical experts while developing new ones.

Once a process is developed and refined through the partnership, KJLC could make it available to customers using its equipment elsewhere, extending work done at Penn State to researchers and companies around the world.

For more information: Communications Materials

Image: Andrew Read, Penn State senior vice president for research, right, and Kurt Lesker IV, president and CEO of Kurt J. Lesker Company, left, do a ceremonial ribbon cutting to launch the partnership between Penn State and Kurt J. Lesker Company to develop new ways to create specialized materials for next-generation technologies. Credit: Jennifer M. McCann / Penn State

Scientists are building a microscope powered by a quantum computer

Researchers at TU Wien, in collaboration with the University of Vienna, JKU Linz and the University of Innsbruck, are developing a quantum computer-assisted electron microscope designed to capture additional quantum information carried by electrons that is typically lost in conventional imaging. The approach could produce clearer images while reducing the number of electrons needed, helping protect delicate samples such as biological materials. A prototype quantum computer electron microscope based on the concept is currently under construction at TU Wien.

For more infromation: University of Vienna

Image: An electron microscope capable of performing quantum computing operations using built-in ion traps. Credit: TU Wien

Rice’s Sanchez exploring a future where fabric itself becomes the robot

Rice University Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Vanessa Sanchez has received the Toyota Programmable System Innovation Fellowship to develop advanced 3D-knitted soft robotic textiles that integrate sensing, movement and mechanical functions directly into fabric. The research aims to create textiles that can adapt to users’ needs, such as enhancing mobility, improving comfort and increasing safety, with the long-term goal of making the textile itself function as a robot.

“We tend to think of fabric as something passive — something that covers, cushions or supports another device,” Sanchez said. “We’re asking what happens when the textile becomes the device itself with sensing, movement and mechanical function built directly into its structure.”

Today’s soft robotic systems often combine fabrics with separate sensors, actuators, electronics and structural components. That can make devices bulky and complicated to manufacture and can limit their ability to comfortably conform to different bodies. Sanchez’s team is taking a different approach. By carefully controlling yarn selection, stitch patterns and three-dimensional knit architecture, she aims to encode mechanical behavior into a textile as it is manufactured. Functional fibers, pneumatic channels and sensors could be integrated into the same knitted structure, allowing a fabric to bend, twist, contract or inflate while also sensing its own movement and interaction with a user.

This approach builds on years of Sanchez’s work in the field of textiles, materials science and robotics — and the unconventional path she took to get here.

Sanchez began using a sewing machine as a young child, and she initially studied fashion design as an undergraduate.

“I began college studying fashion at FIT before transferring to Cornell to study fiber science,” Sanchez said. “That shift helped me realize I could bring together my interests in design and engineering.”

She later earned graduate degrees at Harvard University, where she worked on soft robotic systems designed to assist human movement, before conducting postdoctoral research at Stanford University. Today, she directs Rice’s texlab, where she designs robotic textiles and soft wearable systems.

That combination of textile design and engineering shapes the new Toyota-supported project.

“Textiles are already extraordinarily good at interacting with the human body,” Sanchez said. “They stretch, conform, distribute forces and move with us. If we can add robotic functionality without losing those qualities, we can begin designing systems that are much more natural and comfortable for people to use.”

The 12-month project will focus first on integrating sensing and actuation — the ability to detect changes and produce movement — within the same 3D-knitted structures.

Using materials including conductive fibers, pneumatic channels and composite knitted architectures, Sanchez’s team plans to create textile modules capable of programmed sequences of motion, such as contracting, bending, twisting and inflating.

At the same time, embedded sensing could allow those structures to detect information such as strain, pressure, deformation and loading. Eventually, that capability could enable a robotic textile to sense what is happening to it and adjust its behavior in response.

Sanchez’s lab has already developed technologies featuring textile-based sensors, programmed textile actuators, morphing fabrics and knitted pneumatic actuators capable of producing specific motions based on their structure. At Rice, her group is also investigating AI-guided textile design and new manufacturing techniques for knitted robotic systems.

The fellowship will allow her to begin bringing those capabilities together into more integrated systems.

The second phase of the project will translate those textile systems into prototype technologies relevant to mobility. Possible applications include wearable devices that provide localized assistance to help a person move, seating or interior surfaces that change shape or stiffness in response to a user and soft safety structures that deploy or deform to absorb energy.

The prototypes will be developed in collaboration with Toyota researchers and evaluated for performance, sensing, manufacturability, weight, adaptability and safe interaction with people.

The research reflects a general shift toward designing robots that can operate more naturally alongside humans. For Sanchez, the project is part of a larger effort to expand what textiles can do.

“I’m continuously trying to understand the relationship between fibers and yarns and their structures so well that I can be really innovative and build something brand new,” she said. “Ultimately, I want to use textiles to create new kinds of machines and systems that can support people.”

For more information: Texlab

Image: Vanessa Sanchez in her lab at Rice.

Matergenics deploys first-of-its-kind in-steel hydrogen embrittlement sensor at italian green-hydrogen blending facility

Matergenics has deployed its hydrogen-in-steel monitoring sensor at a hydrogen-natural gas blending facility in Italy, marking the first operational use of the technology. Engineered by Techfem S.p.A., the facility blends green hydrogen into a natural gas network and is supported by continuous remote monitoring from Matergenics’ Hydrogen Solutions Division in Pittsburgh. The system uses continuous dilation measurements and HEILD-based analysis to help assess hydrogen embrittlement risks in operating steel piping.

Hydrogen blending is widely regarded as a near-term pathway for reducing the carbon intensity of existing natural gas infrastructure. However, introducing hydrogen into steel piping can increase susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement—a degradation process in which absorbed hydrogen reduces ductility and fracture resistance and may contribute to crack initiation or accelerated crack growth without readily visible warning signs.

Conventional operating measurements, including pressure, flow, temperature, and leak detection, do not directly characterize hydrogen uptake or the evolving mechanical response of the steel. Matergenics’ monitoring technology is designed to help address this gap.

The sensor is bonded directly to the exterior of the pipe and continuously measures extremely small dimensional and strain changes associated with hydrogen interaction with the steel. The resulting data are securely transmitted to Matergenics’ Pittsburgh monitoring center, where they are evaluated using proprietary analytical methods based on HEILD—the Hydrogen-Enhanced Instability by Local Dilation framework.

HEILD relates localized, hydrogen-associated dilation and mechanical instability to the susceptibility of a specific material and component to hydrogen-assisted damage. Rather than relying solely on hydrogen pressure, exposure time, or other generalized operating parameters, the system evaluates the response of the actual steel component while it remains in service.

“For decades, the hydrogen-embrittlement community has largely had to infer risk from environmental conditions, laboratory testing, and indirect measurements,” said Dr. Michael McGuire, Chief Scientist at Matergenics. “This deployment gives us the ability to monitor the mechanical response of an operating steel pipe continuously and translate that response into actionable information for integrity management.”

The project combines Techfem’s expertise in hydrogen and hydrogen–natural gas infrastructure with Matergenics’ sensing, materials-testing, and analytical capabilities. Together, the technologies provide the facility operator with visibility into a degradation mechanism that conventional pressure, flow, and leak-monitoring systems are not designed to detect.

“This installation represents an important step toward condition-based integrity management for hydrogen infrastructure,” said Dr. Mehrooz Zamanzadeh, Founder and President of Matergenics. “Our objective is to help operators identify changes in hydrogen-related risk before they develop into cracking, leakage, or loss of containment.”

The installation builds on an ongoing hydrogen-monitoring collaboration between Matergenics and Techfem and supports Matergenics’ continuing development and validation of HEILD as a framework for evaluating hydrogen-assisted damage in ferritic, martensitic, and austenitic steels.

Matergenics and Techfem intend to evaluate the system’s in-service performance and explore its application to additional hydrogen-blending facilities, pipelines, storage systems, and other hydrogen-exposed assets.

ABOUT MATERGENICS, INC.

Matergenics, Inc. is a materials, corrosion, and failure-analysis engineering firm headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Led by Dr. Mehrooz Zamanzadeh, FAMPP and FASM, the company provides corrosion assessment, materials testing, failure analysis, structural-integrity evaluation, and remote monitoring services. Matergenics’ Hydrogen Solutions Division focuses on hydrogen embrittlement research, accelerated testing, materials qualification, and in-service structural monitoring. Its technologies include HEILD—the Hydrogen-Enhanced Instability by Local Dilation framework—and the Circumferentially Pre-Cracked Round Bar methodology for accelerated determination of threshold stress-intensity behavior, K₁ₕ, in hydrogen environments.

ABOUT TECHFEM S.p.A.

Techfem S.p.A. is an Italian engineering company with more than 40 years of experience in strategic energy infrastructure. The company delivers engineering and project management services across the hydrogen, natural gas, CO₂, and power transmission sectors, supporting the development of secure and sustainable energy systems. With over 60 hydrogen projects in its portfolio, Techfem is active throughout the hydrogen value chain, from production and blending to transport and storage, while advancing innovative solutions through participation in national and European research and development programs.

For more information: Matergenics, Inc.

 

Detecting ultra-low sulfur levels in superalloys

LECO Corporation, St. Joseph, Mich., has demonstrated how its CS844ES elemental analyzer enables accurate determination of sulfur at levels as low as 0.1 µg in steel, nickel, and superalloys, extending the combustion technique to sensitivities previously unachievable

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MIT researchers use AI to uncover atomic defects in materials

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built an AI model trained on 2,000 different semiconductor materials using data from a noninvasive neutron-scattering technique that can detect and classify up to six kinds of point defects in a material simultaneously, something that would be impossible using conventional techniques alone.

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Minnesota iron ore could be key to sustainable and lower-cost semiconductor

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have, for the first time, demonstrated that Minnesota’s abundant low-grade iron ore can be converted into semiconductor-quality pyrite, also known as iron sulfide or “fool’s gold.” The breakthrough could open the door to more cost-effective and sustainable electronic devices by transforming a widely available natural resource into a valuable semiconductor material. Because pyrite is inexpensive, non-toxic and highly effective at absorbing light, it has significant potential for future technologies, and this research shows that Minnesota’s iron ore resources may provide a viable pathway for producing high-quality semiconductor materials despite the challenges posed by impurities and defects.