Six Decades of Research on 2D Materials: Progress, Dead Ends, and New Horizons

Abstract

The present paper guides the reader through six decades of research on 2D materials, thereby putting special focus on the use of these materials for electronic devices. It is shown that after a slow start and only little activity over many years, since 2004 the exploration of 2D materials advanced at an enormous pace. While some of the high expectations raised in the so-called golden era of graphene did not fulfil, other electronic applications for 2D materials that originally were not on the agenda gain increasing attention now. One of the main research topics in the field of 2D materials during the early 2000s was high-performance graphene transistors. This effort, however, led to a dead end due the consequences of the missing bandgap in graphene. On the other hand, the semiconducting 2D materials show potential for different device concepts including stacked-channel 2D nanosheet MOSFETs and 2D memristors. The former may become the transistor architecture of choice at the end of the CMOS roadmap and 2D memristors represent a promising device concept for future neuromorphic computing, a type of information processing that shows great potential for artificial intelligence applications where energy efficiency is a key requirement.