A team led by Peng Zhou at Fudan University has built a radio-frequency communication system from atomically thin molybdenum disulfide transistors, flown it aboard a satellite in low Earth orbit for nine months, and reported near-flawless signal fidelity throughout. The result, described in a recent Nature study, suggests that electronics just 0.7 nanometers thick can shrug off the space radiation that steadily degrades conventional silicon chips, with models projecting a functional lifespan of roughly 271 years in geosynchronous orbit. If the prediction holds, it would rewrite the economics of satellite design by slashing the heavy shielding and redundant circuitry that currently drive up launch costs.
A Single Atomic Layer Tested in Orbit
The system at the center of this work is a wafer-scale monolayer MoS2 transistor transmitter and receiver operating in the 12 to 18 GHz radio-frequency band. Fudan University launched it aboard the Fudan No.1 Lancang-Mekong Future Satellite, a roughly 50 kg spacecraft placed into a sun-synchronous orbit at approximately 500 kilometers altitude in September 2024. At that altitude, the satellite sits inside the same radiation belt environment that bathes most communications constellations, making it a direct stress test rather than a sheltered demonstration.
After nine months of continuous operation at roughly 517 km, the system maintained a bit-error rate below 10-8, meaning fewer than one data error per hundred million transmitted bits even as it cycled through temperature extremes and background particle hits. The on/off ratio of the monolayer MoS2 field-effect transistors held steady at about 108 despite the accumulated dose, a stability that typical silicon devices would struggle to match under the same conditions. These in-orbit measurements complement earlier device characterizations that required researchers to log in through a publisher access portal to examine transistor-level parameters, underscoring how quickly laboratory prototypes have progressed to space-ready hardware.
Why Thinner Means Tougher
The physics behind the result is counterintuitive: making a semiconductor channel thinner normally makes it more fragile, but at the atomic scale the relationship flips. As Liyuan Zhu and colleagues described in a companion analysis, the 0.7 nm channel thickness achieved with monolayer MoS2 represents what they call the ultimate limit of thinness for a functional semiconductor, leaving almost no volume for charge to become trapped by radiation-induced defects. When a high-energy particle strikes such a thin target, it deposits far less energy than it would in a bulk silicon transistor, simply because there is almost no material to interact with. That reduced interaction cross-section is the key advantage: the inherently ultra-thin body of 2D materials shrinks the target that radiation can hit.
Controlled ground tests have reinforced this picture. A separate study in Nature Communications subjected multiple 2D-material devices and structures to gamma rays, protons, and electrons under laboratory conditions, then modeled orbital radiation levels using the European Space Agency’s SPENVIS environment toolkit. The result was negligible degradation across all tested devices, even when doses were pushed beyond those expected in typical low Earth or geosynchronous missions. Conventional silicon electronics, by contrast, face total ionizing doses in the range of 10 to 100 krad(Si) over a standard satellite or probe mission, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and those levels are enough to cause threshold shifts, leakage currents, and cumulative failures without dedicated shielding or radiation-hardened designs.
Centuries of Projected Survival
Based on the orbital data and the ground irradiation results, the Fudan team estimates that electronics built from atomically thin MoS2 could survive for approximately 271 years in geosynchronous orbit, far outlasting conventional silicon-based technologies. That figure comes from extrapolating the measured degradation rate at 517 km to the higher but steadier radiation environment at roughly 36,000 km, where geostationary communications satellites operate for decades at a time. While a 271-year prediction is impossible to verify directly, the underlying data point (nine months of near-zero degradation in a real orbital environment) gives the estimate more weight than a purely theoretical model would carry and offers a rare bridge between device physics and system-level reliability.
The projection also highlights a gap in current coverage of this research. Much of the public discussion treats the century-scale lifetime as a curious headline number, but the practical consequences are more immediate. If even a fraction of that durability holds, satellite operators could extend mission lifetimes from the current 15-to-20-year norm for geostationary platforms to several decades, changing how constellations are financed, insured, and replenished. Longer-lived electronics would also slow the rate at which decommissioned satellites add to orbital debris, a growing concern as launch cadence accelerates under exploration efforts such as NASA’s Artemis lunar program and as commercial mega-constellations multiply in low Earth orbit.
Ditching the Shielding Tax
Conventional space electronics rely on heavy radiation shielding or complex redundant architectures to survive, and both approaches carry steep penalties. Extra shielding mass raises launch costs almost dollar for dollar in proportion to weight, while triple-modular redundancy and error-correcting schemes consume valuable power and volume that could otherwise support payload instruments or communications capacity. Designers of deep-space missions routinely accept these trade-offs because there has been no alternative to silicon-based chips that steadily accumulate damage from total ionizing dose and single-event effects.
Atomically thin MoS2 devices offer a different path by reducing vulnerability at the material level rather than compensating with armor and backups. Because the active channel is only one layer of atoms thick, there is less bulk for charges to become trapped in, and displacement damage does not propagate as easily through the lattice. A recent analysis in npj Microgravity notes that this kind of intrinsic resilience could enable lighter spacecraft structures that rely more on smart materials than on brute-force shielding. In practice, that might mean satellite buses built with thinner walls, fewer dedicated radiation vaults, and simpler power distribution units, all of which would free up mass and cost margins for additional sensors or extended propellant reserves.
From Lab Curiosity to Workhorse Technology
The leap from laboratory prototypes to a fully functional satellite link marks a turning point for 2D-material electronics. Earlier work had already shown that the ultra-thin bodies of 2D semiconductors can suppress many radiation-induced failure modes that plague bulk devices, but those demonstrations were largely confined to test structures on wafers. By integrating a wafer-scale monolayer MoS2 RF front end into a 50 kg spacecraft and operating it continuously for months, the Fudan team has shown that the manufacturing, packaging, and system engineering challenges can be met without exotic processes. That matters for industry adoption, because satellite builders will only embrace new materials if they can be slotted into existing production lines and qualification workflows.
Significant hurdles remain before atomically thin electronics become a staple of commercial space hardware. Scaling up from single-wafer experiments to the thousands of devices needed for a large communications payload will require tighter control over defects, uniform contacts, and thermal management, especially as operating frequencies climb into the millimeter-wave bands. Space agencies and insurers will also demand longer test campaigns, including exposure to solar storms and worst-case radiation events, before they accept century-scale lifetime projections in their risk models. Even so, the combination of near-perfect in-orbit performance, strong ground-test backing, and a clear physics rationale has shifted atomically thin MoS2 from a speculative possibility to a credible candidate for the next generation of space-qualified electronics, with the potential to lighten spacecraft, lengthen missions, and reshape the economics of operating in orbit.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
