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Two-dimensional materials

Metal stamp method for residue-free two-dimensional semiconductor patterning

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, page 521 (2025)Cite this article

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Despite marked progress in synthesizing wafer-scale two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors crystalline films, transitioning these materials from laboratory-scale demonstrations to industrial-scale integrated circuits remains challenging. A primary obstacle is achieving high uniformity and yield in electronic manufacturing. Traditional patterning techniques, designed for manipulating three-dimensional ‘bulk’ materials, are not suitable for handling near-weightless, single-atom-thick films and introduce surface contamination that negatively affect the performance and uniformity of large-scale 2D-based electronic devices. Now, writing in Nature Electronics, Zhiwei Li et al. present a metal-stamp imprinting method for residue-free patterning of wafer-scale 2D materials without using photoresists or chemical reagents.

The metal-stamp imprinting method offers a high-throughput patterning technology that overcomes the contamination issues associated with traditional methods, facilitating the production of uniform, high-yield electronic devices. The method could be extended to other monolayer materials, such as chemical vapour deposition-grown tungsten disulfide and tungsten diselenide and could be conducive to research in fields such as twisted moiré superlattices and monolithic integration. “At present, the precision of our imprinting templates is limited to the scale of hundreds of nanometres. In the future, we hope to further promote the patterning of 2D materials to the nanometre scale and develop an automated mechanical equipment compatible with this technology” concludes Li.

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  1. Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering https://www.nature.com/natrevelectreng/

    Silvia Conti

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  1. Silvia Conti
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Correspondence to Silvia Conti.

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Conti, S. Metal stamp method for residue-free two-dimensional semiconductor patterning. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 521 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-025-00200-7

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