Penn State Research Team Builds 2D CMOS System
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Gaze into the temporal distance and you might spot the end of the age of silicon looming somewhere out there, as a research team at Penn State University claims to have built the first working CMOS computer entirely from two-dimensional materials.
The team, led by Pennsylvania State University engineering science professor Saptarshi Das, published a paper last week detailing the design and construction of their 2D one instruction set computer (OISC) based on the same complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) design that's a standard part of modern silicon-based computers.OISC is a minimalist abstract machine model that performs all operations using a single, universal instruction.
Does that mean we can expect to live through a post-silicon, 2D computing revolution? It won't be quite like that, Das told us.Rather, 2D CMOS computers will have specialized uses.
"They could become competitive in specialized domains such as edge AI, neuromorphic systems, or flexible electronics," Das told us.
The 2D machine they built is silicon-free, using molybdenum disulfide for n-type and tungsten diselenide for p-type transistors. The material pair "offer complementary electrical characteristics, relatively high mobility, and have demonstrated scalable growth via metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)," Das told The Register in an email. MOCVD was used to fabricate the team's 2D CMOS platform on sapphire wafers, with transistor channels just one atom thick.
CMOS systems need both n- and p-type transistors (which move electrons along a circuit by having an excess and deficiency of electrons, respectively) to achieve the goal of CMOS computing - energy efficiency and reusability. That's why the team's 2D CMOS design is such a breakthrough, according to Das.
"We have demonstrated, for the first time, a CMOS computer built entirely from 2D materials," Das said in an announcement on the Penn State website.
[...] "[Scalability] is one of the most critical aspects of our work," Das told us. "While some steps (e.g., layer alignment and transfer) are still manual, most of the process is compatible with industry tools and can be automated."
Also see the Penn State press release
Journal Reference: Ghosh, S., Zheng, Y., Rafiq, M. et al. A complementary two-dimensional material-based one instruction set computer. Nature 642, 327-335 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08963-7
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