At IEDM 2023 in San Francisco, PhantaField publicly demonstrated its 8-inch plasma-photon MOCVD system for the first time — growing continuous MoS₂ monolayers across full 200 mm wafers at temperatures a finished CMOS wafer can survive. It was the company's first public result, arriving just five weeks after the angel investment that funded the prototype.
The demonstration mattered less for its size than for its temperature. Wafer-scale 2D growth had been shown before; wafer-scale 2D growth cold enough to happen on top of existing circuitry had not. That is the specific capability monolithic 3D integration requires, and it is the one the 8-inch tool was built to prove.
The recipe that scaled
The system established the core process the company still runs today: inductively-coupled plasma to activate precursors below the back-end-of-line thermal ceiling, paired with in-situ UV irradiation that repairs lattice defects during growth rather than after it. Those 200 mm results became the direct engineering basis for the production 12-inch NanoGalaxy platform that followed two years later — and through it, for the Sophon stack itself.