A laboratory jointly set up by the Shaoxing municipal government and Fudan University is building a pilot production line for chips made from two-dimensional semiconductors. The lab, referred to here as Shaoxin Laboratory, showed visitors a two-inch wafer with a faint yellow tint. The color comes from molybdenum disulfide, a 2D material only a few atoms thick.
As transistors approach physical limits, current control, power use and manufacturing cost are getting harder to manage. 2D materials offer another path. Atom-thin channels may keep better control of current as devices shrink, and new materials and structures open the door to fast, low-power memory.
The division of labor is clear, according to Gu Chenjie, assistant to the lab's director. Fudan handles basic breakthroughs, while the Shaoxing lab turns results into chips that can be manufactured and used. The lab is building a 2D chip pilot platform, developing EDA tools and a full process flow, and adding packaging, testing and verification.
The approach pairs new material with mature silicon. Memory cells use 2D material, while read and write control circuits stay on established silicon processes that do not need advanced nodes. This builds on Fudan's earlier work. In April 2025 the team reported PoX, a flash device with a 400-picosecond write speed. In October 2025 it integrated 2D memory with silicon CMOS control circuits in a full-function flash chip based on its CY-01 architecture. In July 2026 it reported room-temperature single-electron non-volatile memory.
As of September, the lab's first-phase cleanroom was finished, some equipment had arrived and the rest was being purchased. Gu expects a fairly complete pilot line by the end of 2027. The hard parts are process ones: atom-thin layers on silicon are sensitive to surface roughness and processing damage, and variation across a wafer and between batches drives yield and cost. Gu said the team has not yet estimated cost because full-wafer manufacturing has not been verified.
The lab is also developing a process design kit, or PDK, with device parameters, dimensions and connection rules so outside teams can design circuits and send them for fabrication. The platform will offer contract R&D, specific process development and processing and testing services, and it will be open to companies and research teams that need 2D semiconductor tape-outs. Staff named power-grid metering as a possible first application for its chips.
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