2D Material Heterostructure Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak of 265 records but stayed within an 8% band (211 to 194) across 2021-2024, the last fully comparable window — this is a plateau, not a collapse.
- The top 5 assignees hold 26.1% of all 2,357 records and the top 10 hold 36.4% — concentrated enough to matter, but leaving well over half the field to a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- H01L dominates at 49.0% of records while B82Y nanotechnology-specific filings sit at just 6.7%, suggesting most protection is being built around device integration rather than the material science itself.
Filing growth compares 2021 (211 records) with 2024 (194) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 2,357 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity around van der Waals heterostructure stacking — the practice of layering atomically thin materials such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides and black phosphorus into stacks held together by van der Waals force rather than covalent bonds. The search spans filings that combine language around heterostructure stacking or 2D heterostructures with language identifying the underlying material as two-dimensional or atomically thin, across 2,357 records published between 2015 and mid-2026.
The dataset sits at the intersection of semiconductor device engineering and materials science: most records carry IPC classes for semiconductor devices, but a meaningful share also carry classes for crystal growth, nanotechnology applications and material analysis, reflecting a field that runs from fundamental stacking methods through to device-level integration.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The two views below cover the same 2,357 records from different angles: one tracks when filings happened, the other what they claim.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings ran from 221 in 2017 to a peak of 265 in 2020, then eased to 211 in 2021 and 194 in 2024 — an 8% decline over that three-year span. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 reflect incomplete data rather than an actual drop-off in filing activity.
IPC subclass composition
H01L (semiconductor devices) touches 49.0% of records, with H10D and C01B each covering roughly 15%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to well over 100% of the 2,357 records in scope — they describe overlap in claim scope, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,357 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Two-Dimensional Materials — Van-der-Waals Heterostructure Stacking Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Black phosphorus-two dimensional material complex and method of manufacturing the same
Provided are a black phosphorus-two dimensional material complex and a method of manufacturing it. The complex includes first and second two-dimensional material layers, each with a two-dimensional crystal structure, coupled to each other by van der Waals force, with a black phosphorus sheet sandwiched between them, the phosphorus atoms in that sheet covalently bonded to one another.Filed by UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), published 2022-05-19 as US20220157947A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200161129A1 | Methods for depositing a transition metal chalcogenide film on a substrate by a cyclical deposition process | 374 |
| 2 | US20210005450A1 | Methods for depositing a transition metal chalcogenide film on a substrate by a cyclical deposition process | 324 |
| 3 | US20090087493A1 | Supramolecular Functionalization of Graphitic Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery | 185 |
| 4 | US20160284811A1 | Electronics including graphene-based hybrid structures | 171 |
| 5 | US20160301096A1 | Zinc Ion-Exchanging Energy Storage Device | 170 |
| 6 | US20190244933A1 | 3D semiconductor device and structure | 159 |
| 7 | US20170059514A1 | Chemically-sensitive field effect transistors, systems, and methods for manufacturing and using the same | 141 |
| 8 | US20180102442A1 | Microstructure enhanced absorption photosensitive devices | 139 |
| 9 | US20190288132A1 | Microstructure enhanced absorption photosensitive devices | 132 |
| 10 | WO2020051000A1 | Flash joule heating synthesis method and compositions thereof | 100 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited — read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the filing counts, classes and citations are read together.
A meaningful core, not a monopoly
The leader alone holds 214 records, and the top 10 combined reach 36.4% of all records in scope. That leaves nearly two-thirds of the field to entities outside the ranked leaders — enough headroom that a well-targeted filing program can still establish a defensible position without displacing an incumbent.
Device integration outpaces materials-specific claims
Semiconductor device classes (H01L, H10D) cover far more records than the nanotechnology-specific B82Y class. That imbalance suggests companies are racing to claim how stacked 2D materials get built into devices, while claims on the underlying material chemistry and growth (C30B at 4.8%) remain comparatively thin.
A plateau, read correctly
The three-year comparison from 2021 to 2024 — the most recent window unaffected by publication lag — shows an 8% decline, not a collapse. Filing volume off the 2020 peak of 265 looks more like a maturing claim space than an abandoned one.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to two-dimensional materials — van-der-waals heterostructure stacking patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
Large device manufacturers and research universities both appear among the ranked leaders, but recent-year momentum data shows even the most active assignees pulling back sharply from prior peaks — a sign the field's early land grab has largely played out for the incumbents who defined it.
The single largest filer
The leading assignee's 214 records represent 9.1% of the 2,357 records in scope on its own — roughly a third of the entire top-5 total — concentrated heavily in semiconductor device integration.
Университет-industry pairing dominates the strongest link
The strongest co-assignee pair recorded 36 shared filings, well ahead of the next strongest pairs at 16 and 12 — evidence of a small number of durable, deep research partnerships rather than broad cross-licensing.
Even leaders are pulling back
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows flat or sharply negative year-over-year filing counts, from -80% to -100%. Combined with the 18-month publication lag, this looks like a reporting gap rather than proof the leaders have stopped filing — but it is also consistent with a claim space where the obvious ground has already been staked.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) | 1 | -95% |
| William Marsh Rice University | 1 | -80% |
| Northwestern University | 1 | 0% |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| National University of Singapore | 0 | -100% |
| University of Manchester | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claims and specific competitors.
Map claims against your own stack design
Run your specific layer sequence, material combination or transfer process against the claim language in the most-cited and most recent records to see where overlap actually sits.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Track the leaders' next move
Momentum figures shift fast in a plateauing field; monitoring the ranked leaders' filing activity flags a resumed push before it shows up in aggregate counts.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap Eureka →Test white space claims for novelty
Before committing R&D budget to an under-claimed branch, check whether the thin filing density reflects real openness or simply a hard problem nobody has solved yet.
Run a novelty check in Patsnap Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 214 records, ahead of a group that together makes up the top 5 at 26.1% of all 2,357 records in scope. The leader board mixes large semiconductor manufacturers with research universities, reflecting a field that spans both fundamental materials science and device integration. No single entity approaches a majority share, so the field remains open to new entrants even as the top ranks are well established.
Filing peaked in 2020 at 265 records and eased to 194 by 2024, an 8% decline over the 2021-2024 window that is the most recent period unaffected by publication lag. That is a modest pullback, not a collapse, and it is consistent with a field where the most obvious claim territory has already been staked. Counts for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that reflects the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication rather than an actual drop in activity.
The largest single class is H01L, covering semiconductor devices generally, at 49.0% of the 2,357 records in scope. H10D and C01B each cover roughly 15% of records, with smaller shares in material testing (G01N), nanotechnology (B82Y) and crystal growth (C30B). Because most records carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than add to 100%, which itself signals that most inventions in this space combine device engineering with materials or process claims.
Relative to the dense claim coverage in core semiconductor device integration (H01L at 49.0% of records), branches like crystal growth methods, transfer and alignment tooling, and strain-engineered interfaces carry comparatively few dedicated filings. That does not guarantee freedom to operate — thin filing density can mean either genuine openness or a problem nobody has solved cleanly yet. It is a starting point for a closer novelty search, not a conclusion on its own.
US20220157947A1, filed by UNIST and published 2022-05-19, describes a black phosphorus-two dimensional material complex: two 2D material layers coupled by van der Waals force with a black phosphorus sheet sandwiched between them. The claim scope centres on that specific three-layer arrangement and the method of manufacturing it, rather than on van der Waals stacking generally. Anyone working with black phosphorus interlayers in a similar sandwich configuration should review this filing's claim language closely before finalising a stack design.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.