A FinFET with one atomic layer channel

Since its invention in the 1960s, one of the most significant evolutions of metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOS-FETs) would be the three dimensionalized version that makes the semiconducting channel vertically wrapped by conformal gate electrodes, also recognized as FinFET. During the past decades, the width of fin (Wfin) in FinFETs has shrunk from about 150 nm to a few nanometers. However, Wfin seems to have been levelling off in recent years, owing to the limitation of lithography precision. Here, we show that by adapting a template-growth method, different types of mono-layered two-dimensional crystals are isolated in a vertical manner. Based on this, FinFETs with one atomic layer fin are obtained, with on/off ratios reaching ~107. Our findings push the FinFET to the sub 1 nm fin-width limit, and may shed light on the next generation nanoelectronics for higher integration and lower power consumption.

Mao-Lin Chen, Xingdan Sun, Hang Liu, Hanwen Wang, Qianbing Zhu, Shasha Wang, Haifeng Du, Baojuan Dong, Jing Zhang, Yun Sun, Song Qiu, Thomas Alava, Song Liu, Dong-Ming Sun, Zheng Han