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World’s first 2D-silicon hybrid flash chip achieves record speed and 94% memory yield Neetika Walter
Detailed architecture of a computer chip nestled on a circuit board. (Representational image) Getty Images The race for faster, more efficient chips has reached a new milestone. Scientists at Shanghai’s Fudan University have unveiled the world’s first full-featured 2D flash chip, an engineering feat that could revolutionize how future electronic devices store and process information.
The chip merges ultrafast 2D flash memory with mature silicon-based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.
The result is a hybrid system that bridges research innovation and large-scale industrial application, pushing data technology toward a new high-speed frontier.
The breakthrough device supports eight-bit instruction operations and 32-bit high-speed parallel operations with random access, achieving a 94.3 percent memory cell yield.
Its operation speed surpasses existing flash memory technologies, marking the first successful engineering integration of 2D materials with silicon.
In an age dominated by artificial intelligence, where data access speed is everything, this advancement addresses one of computing’s most pressing bottlenecks.
The limited speed and high power consumption of traditional memory architectures have long slowed the growth of AI systems. Fudan’s innovation may just unlock a faster future.
Blending two worlds
In April, the same team made headlines after developing the PoX 2D flash memory prototype, which achieved an extraordinary program speed of 400 picoseconds, the fastest semiconductor charge storage ever recorded. But industrializing such breakthroughs often takes decades.
“It took about 24 years from the first prototype semiconductor transistor to the first CPU. However, by integrating emerging technologies into the existing CMOS platform, the process in our research is significantly compressed. We can further accelerate the exploration of disruptive applications in the future,” said Liu Chunsen, first and corresponding author of the paper.
The researchers from Fudan University’s State Key Laboratory of Integrated Chips and Systems and the College of Integrated Circuits and Micro-nano Electronics aimed to overcome this time lag by embedding 2D flash technology directly into CMOS platforms.
This strategic integration offers a roadmap for turning experimental devices into commercial systems.
Zhou Peng, another corresponding author, said storage devices will likely be the first type of 2D electronic systems to reach industrialization because they have “modest demands on material quality and manufacturing processes, coupled with performance metrics that far exceed current technologies.”
Atomic-scale integration
Traditional chips rely on silicon wafers that are hundreds of micrometers thick, while 2D semiconductor materials are just a few atoms in thickness, less than one nanometer. Integrating such fragile materials onto rough CMOS surfaces posed a major challenge.
“This is like looking at Shanghai from space. It seems flat, but within the city, there are buildings of varying heights — over 400 meters, 100 meters, or just a few dozen meters. If you lay a thin film over the city, the film itself would not be flat,” said Zhou, illustrating the delicate process of merging two vastly different material worlds.
To address this, the team used flexible 2D materials and a modular integration approach, fabricating 2D circuits on CMOS substrates and connecting them via high-density monolithic interconnections. This atomic-level bonding process allows stable and efficient communication between the two technologies.
The chip has completed its tape-out phase, and the researchers plan to establish a pilot production line in the coming years, scaling it to a megabyte-level system within three to five years.
Experts say the achievement could help overcome the growing storage bottleneck in AI systems, which are increasingly data-heavy.
“This research represents a ‘source technology’ in China’s integrated circuit field, allowing the country to take the lead in next-generation core storage technologies,” said Zhou.
As the world pushes toward faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient computing, Fudan University’s 2D-silicon hybrid chip could become the cornerstone of the next digital revolution.
