Due to the constraints imposed by physical effects and performance degradation, silicon-based chip technology is facing certain limitations in sustaining the advancement of Moore’s law. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged as highly promising candidates for the post-Moore era, offering significant potential in domains such as integrated circuits and next-generation computing. Here, in this review, the progress of 2D semiconductors in process engineering and various electronic applications are summarized. A careful introduction of material synthesis, transistor engineering focused on device configuration, dielectric engineering, contact engineering, and material integration are given first. Then 2D transistors for certain electronic applications including digital and analog circuits, heterogeneous integration chips, and sensing circuits are discussed. Moreover, several promising applications (artificial intelligence chips and quantum chips) based on specific mechanism devices are introduced. Finally, the challenges for 2D materials encountered in achieving circuit-level or system-level applications are analyzed, and potential development pathways or roadmaps are further speculated and outlooked.

The stability of the subthreshold swing (SS) is quite important for switch and memory applications in logic circuits. The SS in our MoS₂ field effect transistor (FET) is enlarged when the gate voltage sweep range expands towards the negative direction. This is quite different from other reported MoS₂ FETs whose SS is almost constant while varying gate voltage sweep range. This anomalous SS enlargement can be attributed to interface states at the MoS₂–SiO₂ interface. Moreover, a deviation of SS from its linear relationship with temperature is found. We relate this deviation to two main reasons, the energetic distribution of interface states and Fermi level shift originated from the thermal activation. Our study may be helpful for the future modification of the MoS₂ FET that is applied in the low power consumption devices and circuits.