A CMOS-Compatible Route to Wafer-Scale Van der Waals Magnets

The integration of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials with silicon-based semiconductor technology is a critical advance for next-generation electronics, yet it has been fundamentally hampered by the absence of synthesis methods that are simultaneously compatible with back-end-of-line (BEOL) thermal budgets and capable of direct growth on amorphous substrates. Here, we overcome this long-standing integration barrier by demonstrating, for the first time, the wafer-scale synthesis of the 2D van der Waals (vdW) magnet FePS₃, and more broadly, other transition metal phosphorus trisulfides. Our Si-CMOS compatible, two-step strategy couples magnetron sputtering of a metal precursor with a precisely controlled phosphosulfurization process at a low temperature of 350°C, enabling the direct growth of high-quality, uniform crystalline films on amorphous SiO₂ and sapphire substrates. The synthesized films exhibit prominent ferromagnetism with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and a Curie temperature of approximately 220 K. This work establishes a technologically viable materials platform, poised to accelerate the integration of 2D magnets into advanced spintronic and quantum computing architectures.