Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) hetero-integration technology is poised to revolutionize the field of electronics by stacking functional layers vertically, thereby creating novel 3D circuity architectures with high integration density and unparalleled multifunctionality. However, the conventional 3D integration technique involves complex wafer processing and intricate interlayer wiring. Here we demonstrate monolithic 3D integration of two-dimensional, material-based artificial intelligence (AI)-processing hardware with ultimate integrability and multifunctionality. A total of six layers of transistor and memristor arrays were vertically integrated into a 3D nanosystem to perform AI tasks, by peeling and stacking of AI processing layers made from bottom-up synthesized two-dimensional materials. This fully monolithic-3D-integrated AI system substantially reduces processing time, voltage drops, latency and footprint due to its densely packed AI processing layers with dense interlayer connectivity. The successful demonstration of this monolithic-3D-integrated AI system will not only provide a material-level solution for hetero-integration of electronics, but also pave the way for unprecedented multifunctional computing hardware with ultimate parallelism.
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Acknowledgements
The team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledges support from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (nos. 2E32260 and 2E32242). J.-H.A. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (no. NRF-2015R1A3A2066337). C.H. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (no. DMR-1921818) and SUPREME, one of seven centres in JUMP 2.0, a Semiconductor Research Corporation programme sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). S.-H.B. acknowledges financial support from Washington University in St. Louis and the institute of Materials Science and Engineering for the use of instruments and staff assistance. S.-H.B. also acknowledges that this work was partially supported by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (IO221219-04250-01). This work was carried out in part through the use of MIT.nano’s facilities. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Baoming Wang for assistance in focused ion beam (FIB) sample preparation. M.-K.S. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (no. NRF-2021R1A6A3A14044297). A.O. acknowledges financial support from Georgia Tech Europe in Metz-France.
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J.K. and S.-H.B. conceived the idea and led the research. J.-H.K., S.-H.B. and J.K. designed experiments. J.-H.K., H.S., K.S.K., M.-K.S., J.-H.A., S.-H.B. and J.K. prepared the manuscript. H.S., A.T.H., K.S.K., D.L., R.Y. and G.Z. grew 2D thin films. P.V., S. Sundaram and A.O. worked on the growth of h-BN on sapphire. J.-H.K., H.S. and M.-K.S. performed device fabrication. H.S., J.-H.K., Y.M. and C.C. designed and conducted computing simulations. B.K., H.K., J.C., B.-I.P., J.S., J.S.K., S.H., Sangho Lee, B.K., Seungju Seo and Seunghwan Seo conducted film transfer and characterization. K.R. and E.P. conducted STEM measurements. D.L., Y.M., J.M.S., B.J.K., S.L., S.O.K., S.M., M.-C.P., S.L., H.-J.K., G.Z., S. Sundaram, A.T.H., Z.X., R.Y., H.A., H.S.K., P.L., C.H., A.O. and J.-H.A. provided feedback throughout the experiments and data analysis. The manuscript was written by J.-H.K., S.-H.B. and J.K. with input from all authors. All authors contributed to the analysis and discussion of the results leading to the manuscript.
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Nature Materials thanks Weida Hu, Tianyou Zhai and Ilia Valov for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Kang, JH., Shin, H., Kim, K.S. et al. Monolithic 3D integration of 2D materials-based electronics towards ultimate edge computing solutions. Nat. Mater. 22, 1470–1477 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01704-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01704-z
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