We can, when necessary: domestic post-silicon electronics
Source: ortsci.ru
The end of the silicon era
Transistors on a crystal will double in size every eighteen months to two years. This is Moore's Law, which still only applies very loosely. But silicon, like any material, has a physical limit to miniaturization, and modern electronics are already approaching it. When the transistor gate length drops below five nanometers, quantum effects begin to dominate: electrons tunnel through the gate barrier even when the transistor is off, causing it to lose its ability to reliably switch between the "on" and "off" states.
This phenomenon, known as the short-channel effect, leads to a sharp increase in leakage currents—parasitic currents that flow through the transistor even when it should be off. The result is increased power consumption, excessive heating of the crystal, and reduced reliability of the entire chip. This is why, in recent years, process nodes designated as "3 nm" or "2 nm" have long ceased to reflect the actual physical dimensions of components—they are more marketing designations for process generations than literal dimensions. The industry has essentially hit a wall, and this is precisely why interest in alternative semiconductor materials capable of operating at the atomic scale without catastrophic loss of control has surged in recent years.
Among the candidates for replacing silicon, two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors—materials consisting of one or more atomic layers—occupy a special place. The most famous representative of this family is graphene, discovered in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov (Nobel Prize in Physics 2010). It possesses fantastic electron mobility, but it lacks an intrinsic band gap, meaning that a transistor based on it cannot be reliably "turned off"—current always flows.
This problem has led researchers to turn their attention to a special class of materials, including molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂), tungsten disulfide (WS₂), molybdenum diselenide (MoSe₂), and tungsten diselenide (WSe₂). Unlike graphene, these materials have an intrinsic band gap, making them ideal semiconductor channels for transistors.
Breakthrough moment in stories The material's breakthrough came in 2011, when András Kisz's group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne first demonstrated a working transistor on a single layer of MoS₂ with excellent characteristics—a high on/off current ratio and low power consumption. Since then, molybdenum disulfide has become one of the most researched materials in post-silicon electronics, with thousands of scientific publications and dozens of laboratories worldwide, from MIT and Stanford to the University of California at Berkeley.
China also joined the race: in the summer of 2026, researchers from Nanjing reported the creation of the first industrial six-inch MoS₂ wafers. Against this backdrop, the announcement of the technology developed by scientists at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology appears to be a logical continuation of the global scientific race, in which Russia has long been more of an observer than a participant. This is the first domestic development of a complete manufacturing cycle for molybdenum disulfide transistors.
The essence of the Russian development
The main technical problem our scientists solved seems simple at first glance. However, in reality, it was precisely this problem that for many years hindered the use of ultra-thin two-dimensional semiconductors in real-world plants. The crux of the matter is this: how to attach a metal contact (electrode) to a material just one atom thick without destroying its incredibly fragile structure?
In conventional microelectronics, contacts are made by literally sputtering a metal (usually gold, titanium, or chromium) directly onto the semiconductor surface in a vacuum. If we're working with a regular, thick piece of silicon, this is perfectly safe. But if we're using a one-atom-thick layer of molybdenum disulfide, where every atom is exposed and uncovered, such sputtering can be disastrous. Fast, heavy metal atoms strike the crystal surface at incredible speeds, knocking out sulfur atoms—the weakest links in this material. This creates "holes" (voids) in the otherwise perfect lattice. These defects disrupt the crystal's order, create electronic interference, and severely impair the electrical contact between the metal and the semiconductor itself. As a result, the transistor develops excessively high resistance, operates unstably, and is no longer suitable for real electronic devices. Roman Romanov, a senior researcher at the Atomic Layer Deposition Laboratory at MIPT, described this situation very accurately:
Ultrathin materials have long promised a breakthrough in electronics manufacturing, but a wall of technological challenges stands between lab experiments and real-world production. The main one is how to connect a wire to a single-atom-thick material without breaking it.
Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have found a solution to this problem, and their findings were published in the international scientific journal Vacuum. The idea is to place a very thin insulating layer of titanium dioxide between the metal electrode and the semiconductor itself. This layer is only a few atoms thick. It is applied using atomic layer deposition (ALD). It sounds complicated, but in fact, this layer-by-layer sputtering method has long been successfully used in modern factories. This means that factories won't have to completely redesign their production lines to accommodate the new technology.
This intermediate layer has two functions that at first glance seem incompatible. On the one hand, it acts as a reliable shield: it physically encloses the semiconductor and prevents heavy metal atoms from penetrating its structure when contact is made. On the other hand, this spacer is so thin that electrons can still pass through it freely. This occurs thanks to quantum tunneling—a special phenomenon in the microworld whereby a particle can pass through a barrier (as if through a wall), even if, according to the laws of classical physics, it should not have enough energy to do so. Ilya Zavidovsky, a senior researcher at the Center for Photonics and 2D Materials at MIPT, explained it this way:
This thin layer acts as a smart barrier. It protects the material from destruction by metal atoms, yet electrons easily pass through it thanks to the laws of quantum physics.
But in practice, another difficulty arose: it's impossible to simply apply titanium dioxide to a perfectly smooth semiconductor surface. The atoms of the protective layer simply have nothing to "cling" to on this chemically passive surface, so the film lays down unevenly, in patches, leaving bare, unprotected areas.
To circumvent this obstacle, scientists from MIPT came up with a beautiful and elegant solution. Before applying the protective film, they lightly irradiate the semiconductor surface with helium ions. The energy of these ions is perfectly calibrated: they don't cause serious damage to the material, but rather gently knock out individual, rare sulfur atoms. Tiny micro-pits or "hooks" appear at the sites of the knocked-out atoms. It is these spots that titanium dioxide molecules cling to as the protective film begins to grow, allowing it to form tightly and without a single gap.
This precise approach allowed the scientists to grow a completely continuous, hole-free protective layer just about one nanometer thick. Moreover, this was achieved using materials grown using industrial methods, which is critical for future mass production. Furthermore, during their experiments, the scientists demonstrated and precisely measured for the first time an important fact: if even a single microscopic gap remains in the protective layer through which the metal touches the semiconductor, it will immediately and dramatically degrade the electrical properties of the entire contact. This means the protective coating must be perfect, with no room for error.
As Roman Romanov puts it, this discovery "changes the requirements for technology" and sets a completely new, stringent quality standard for the production of ultra-thin electronics. More importantly, this method works not only with molybdenum disulfide. Additional experiments have shown that this technology is universal. It can also be applied to a whole group of similar ultra-thin semiconductors (for example, tungsten disulfide or diselenides), which similarly suffer from brittleness when electrodes are connected to them.
National technological sovereignty
Let's imagine an ideal scenario: the technology developed at MIPT has successfully reached mass production. And, crucially, the factories are built right here in Russia, not abroad. What will this mean for ordinary people in their everyday lives? First and foremost, we're talking about a completely different level of energy savings. Scientists have calculated that new ultra-thin transistors will consume hundreds of times less electricity than conventional silicon components of the same size.
Considering that any modern processor contains tens of billions of such microswitches, the savings are colossal. Today, the massive server centers around the world that power the internet consume approximately 1–2% of all electricity produced on the planet. And this figure is only growing due to the boom in neural networks and artificial intelligence. Therefore, even a slight reduction in transistor consumption—let alone a hundredfold reduction—will lead to enormous benefits.
For ordinary users, this means smartphones and laptops will last several times longer on a single charge. For large companies, this represents a chance to dramatically reduce the cost of cooling gigantic servers and mitigate harmful emissions. A second major advantage is the ability to create flexible and completely transparent electronics. Regular silicon is brittle: bend it and it simply cracks. But new materials, just one atom thick, can be bent to any shape. This opens the way to the gadgets of the future: smartphones that can be rolled into tubes, smart clothing with sensors embedded directly in the fabric, and invisible medical patches for health monitoring. We will be able to create transparent screens for smart glasses or car windshields. Furthermore, such lightweight and energy-efficient components are ideal for satellites and the so-called "Internet of Things"—smart sensors in homes and on streets, where every drop of energy is crucial to ensure batteries last for years without replacement.
And this technology is already moving beyond the stage of tentative experiments. For example, this summer, 2026, foreign scientists announced that they had assembled a small prototype processor from molybdenum disulfide, combining 1400 transistors on a single chip. This proves that the technology is maturing: scientists have moved from creating single transistors to assembling complete microcircuits. Of course, 1400 transistors is still very small compared to the billions of components in conventional silicon chips, but it's a start.
It's important to remain realistic: it's too early to say that the new material will wipe out silicon from factories worldwide tomorrow. As experts write in the authoritative scientific journal Nature Communications, engineers still face many complex challenges. For example, they need to learn how to make these ultra-thin films large, smooth, and completely free of defects (scientists in China are currently actively working on this, and have already succeeded in creating such films with a diameter of about 15 centimeters).
Furthermore, the new technology needs to be integrated with modern factories, which cost billions of dollars and are designed exclusively for silicon processing. This is easier in Russia, paradoxical as it may sound. We don't have factories, so building everything from scratch is much easier and cheaper than reworking old ones. It's also important to make the production of new chips affordable. Along the way, a host of other technical challenges need to be addressed: how to make chips resistant to heat and humidity, how to properly add impurities to them to adjust current, and how to ensure their reliable operation for years to come.
Due to all these complexities, most experts are confident that ultra-thin electronics will not eliminate silicon in the near future, but rather work alongside it. These new materials will fill niches where conventional silicon simply cannot cope—where incredible compactness, flexibility, transparency, or maximum battery life are needed. Only then, in ten years or even longer, will this technology mature enough to begin displacing silicon from conventional mass-market computers and smartphones.
And this is where the breakthrough by our MIPT scientists becomes incredibly important, not just as a scientific fact, but as a strategic asset for the entire country. Russian microelectronics is currently under severe sanctions, which have blocked our access to the most advanced foreign factories. The best we can currently produce ourselves on a mass scale (for example, at the Mikron plant in Zelenograd) are 90-nanometer chips. Meanwhile, global giants like Taiwan's TSMC or Korea's Samsung are already making chips 30-40 times smaller (2-3 nanometers). Trying to catch up with them on their own turf, in the production of good old silicon, is an extremely difficult task. But thanks to MIPT's breakthrough, Russia has a unique opportunity.
We no longer need to chase the passing train of obsolete technologies. We can leap into tomorrow and enter the race for the technologies of the future on a completely equal footing. In this new field, we are not laggards, but leaders, on par with the best laboratories in the US, China, and Switzerland. Of course, the path from a beautiful article in a scientific journal to a real factory printing processors is very long. It will require years of hard work and huge financial investments. We must build our own factories from scratch, train specialists, and build the entire chain: from growing the materials themselves to packaging the finished chips into housings.
But the most important achievement has already been achieved. Russian scientists have solved a complex fundamental problem that many considered a dead end: they've figured out how to attach a contact to a single-atom-thick material without destroying it. And it's especially encouraging that their method is suitable for several new materials and can be easily implemented on existing industrial equipment. This means Russia now has a powerful technological lead, recognized by the global scientific community. We've secured our place in the most important technological race of the coming decades—the race to create a material that will replace silicon when it finally reaches the limits of the laws of physics.
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