Non-volatile switches based on 2D materials for 5G/6G applications.*

Recently, non-volatile switching has been observed in various monolayer and multilayer 2D films[1]. In this contribution, we will show that wafer-scale 2D-materials such as MoS2 and hBN can be used for low-power non-volatile switches with applications in communications systems for 5G and 6G. The 2D-based RF switch is a metal-insulator-metal vertical structure made of two electrodes separated by a thin 2D film. It is promising for high-frequency operation because of the favorable scaling compared to other emerging technologies[2].
Owing to the ultimate thickness of the 2D dielectrics, cut-off frequency and switching time figures of merit are superior to those of existing solid state devices. From high-frequency electrical characterization (up to 500GHz, in the THz band) we determine a cut-off frequency figure of merit of 129THz. Furthermore, the switches are 50 times more efficient than other non-volatile switches in terms of a d.c. energy-consumption metric, which is an important consideration for ubiquitous mobile systems. To illustrate the potential of the devices in a real-life application scenario, we operate a switch to route a 125Gbps QAM-32 datastream at 300GHz.

References:
[1] R. Ge et al., Atomristor: Nonvolatile Resistance Switching in Atomic Sheets of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides, Nano Lett. 2018, 18, 434−441
[2] M. Kim et al., Analogue switches made from boron nitride monolayers for application in 5G and terahertz communication systems, Nat. Elec.,2020, 3,479–485