Recently, a research team headed by Luo Junwei from the Institute of Semiconductors at the Chinese Academy of Sciences made a significant finding. They discovered that the surface states, which arise from dangling bonds on the semiconductor's surface, exert a considerable influence on the Fermi level pinning effect at the metal-semiconductor contact interface. This effect has long been a critical obstacle hindering the reduction of contact resistance.

The team found that by introducing external non-metallic atoms, like hydrogen, to passivate these dangling bonds, the impact of the Fermi level pinning effect can be substantially diminished. As a result, the pinning factors for silicon and germanium saw a remarkable increase, rising from 0.16 and 0.02 to 0.5 and 0.45, respectively. This advancement offers crucial theoretical backing for achieving a reduction in contact resistivity to the internationally recognized standard of 10⁻⁹Ω·cm², a target necessary for process nodes below 2nm.