On November 24, 2025, the New Cornerstone Science Foundation officially unveiled the list of the third cohort of "New Cornerstone Investigators," with 35 scientists selected.
A direct bonding–debonding method has been developed to fabricate stacked two-dimensional semiconductors at the wafer scale with engineered layer numbers and interlayer twist angles. The as-produced structures feature pristine surfaces and interfaces, and wafer-scale uniformity — all of which are essential for application in next-generation electronic devices.
Two-dimensional semiconductors possess an ultimate physical thickness, making them effective as transistor channel materials for suppressing short-channel effects. They are key candidate materials for future integrated circuit fabrication at sub-nanometer technology nodes. Currently, the highest-quality two-dimensional semiconductor materials suitable for scalable device integration are those epitaxially grown on sapphire surfaces (refer to team's prior work: ACS Nano 2017, 11: 12001–12007; Nano Letters 2020, 20: 7193–7199; Advanced Materials 2024, 36: 2402855). However, in practical device processing, these epitaxial two-dimensional semiconductors need to be transferred onto substrates suitable for device fabrication. The key challenge lies in efficiently transferring the two-dimensional semiconductor films from their growth substrates to target substrates while maintaining structural integrity and surface/interface cleanliness. This is a critical step to ensure device performance and holds significant importance for the future large-scale manufacturing of two-dimensional semiconductor devices.
Congratulations to Xingchao Zhang, He won CY23 postdoctoral innovative talent support program
This work shows flexible integrated circuits based on monolayer MoS2 can have both high performance and low power consumption, which provides a technical foundation for the development of two-dimensional semiconductor-based integrated circuits to practical applications
Team developed a large-area flexible multifunctional optoelectronic device based on large-area, high-quality, monolayer MoS2. The optical decay time and persistent photoconductance of the device can be effectively controlled by the gate voltage, so that the functions of optical detection, optical storage and photoelectric synapse can be realized.
The flexible artificial retina device reported in this work has simple device structure, high photoelectric conversion efficiency, ultra-low power consumption and strong adjustability, which provides a new design and idea for the development of artificial retina, and has a great application prospect in the future clinical treatment
Team cooperated with Tomas Polcar team from Czech Polytechnic University and conducted systematic research on uitra-low friction effect in large-lattice-mismatch van der Waals heterostructures.
Congratulations to Na, she had been selected into CY21 postdoctoral innovative talent support program. Postdoctoral innovative talent support program is one important measure for China to cultivate high-level innovative young top talents and there are only 400 PHDs can be selected every year.
”NR45 Young Innovators Award” is to commend outstanding young scientists who has dedicated themselves to scientific career and devoted themselves to academic research, also who has got outstanding achievements and has long been engaged in research in the frontier fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. This award confer up to 45 outstanding young scientists who are less than 45 years old every year.
Prof. Zhang was interviewed by Sciences News on Dec, 2020. During the interview, Prof. Zhang said that he has been engaged on 2D materials for 12 years, It is out of interest that drives high-quality innovative research.
Na’s work on flexible electronic devices has successfully achieved the production of large-area MoS2 flexible transistors and logic devices (such as inverters, NOR gates, NAND gates, AND gates, static random access memories and five-stage ring oscillators., etc.). The device exhibits excellent functional characteristics.
Starting from the (AB)-stacked bilayer graphene, Cheng and Prof.Zhang studied the bilayer graphene ("2+2") magic angle system. Considering that a single (AB)-stacked bilayer graphene will open the energy gap at the zero-energy Fermi surface under the action of a displacement electric field perpendicular to the atomic plane, forming a "Mexican hat" band structure.
2D Materials Team
