A research team led by Di and Tian Ziao from the State Key Laboratory of Materials for Integrated Circuits at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, part of CAS, has developed a single-crystal aluminium wafer and introduced oxygen atoms at room temperature to create a single-crystalline aluminium oxide layer just 1.25 nanometers thick, forming an exceptionally thin layer of artificial sapphire, as reported by SCMP.
This cutting-edge research also paves the way for more power-efficient chips. In the field of dielectric materials, the miniaturisation of transistors has posed a significant challenge as devices continue to shrink. Dielectric materials, which typically act as insulators in chips, lose their effectiveness at the nanoscale—one reason our smartphones heat up and have short battery lives.
“By using intercalation oxidation technology on single-crystal aluminium, we were able to produce this single-crystal aluminium oxide dielectric material. Unlike traditional amorphous dielectric materials, our crystalline sapphire can achieve exceptionally low leakage at just one-nanometer level,” explained researcher Di Zengfeng.
