Asymmetric Schottky Contacts in Bilayer MoS2 Field Effect Transistors
Antonio Di Bartolomeo, Alessandro Grillo, Francesca Urban, Laura Iemmo, Filippo Giubileo, Giuseppe Luongo, Giampiero Amato, Luca Croin, Linfeng Sun, Shi-Jun Liang, Lay Kee Ang
We discuss the high-bias electrical characteristics of back-gated field-effect transistors with CVD-synthesized bilayer MoS2 channel and Ti Schottky contacts. We find that oxidized Ti contacts on MoS2 form rectifying junctions with ~0.3 to 0.5 eV Schottky barrier height. To explain the rectifying output characteristics of the transistors, we propose a model based on two slightly asymmetric back-to-back Schottky barriers, where the highest current arises from image force barrier lowering at the electrically forced junction, while the reverse current is due to Schottky-barrier limited injection at the grounded junction. The device achieves a photo responsivity greater than 2.5 AW-1 under 5 mWcm-2 white-LED light. By comparing two- and four-probe measurements, we demonstrate that the hysteresis and persistent photoconductivity exhibited by the transistor are peculiarities of the MoS2 channel rather than effects of the Ti/MoS2 interface.
A new analytical model based on the WKB approximation for MOSFET-like one-dimensional ballistic transistors with Schottky-Barrier contacts has been developed for the drain current. By using a proper approximation of both the Fermi-Dirac distribution function and transmission probability, an analytical solution for the Landauer integral was obtained, which overcomes the limitations of existing models and extends their applicability toward high bias voltages needed for analog applications. The simulations of transfer and output characteristics are found to be in agreement with the experimental d…
Schottky barrier field-effect transistors (SBFETs) based on few and mono layer phosphorene are simulated by the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. It is shown that scaling down the gate oxide thickness results in pronounced ambipolar I-V characteristics and significant increase of the minimal leakage current. The problem of leakage is especially severe when the gate insulator is thin and the number of layer is large, but can be effectively suppressed by reducing phosphorene to mono or bilayer. Different from two-dimensional graphene and layered dichalcogenide materials, both the ON-cu…
In this article, a novel two-path model is proposed to quantitatively explain sub-threshold characteristics of back-gated Schottky barrier FETs (SB-FETs) from 2D channel materials. The model integrates the 'conventional' model for SB-FETs with the phenomenon of contact gating - an effect that significantly affects the carrier injection from the source electrode in back-gated field effect transistors. The two-path model is validated by a careful comparison with experimental characteristics obtained from a large number of back-gated WSe2 devices with various channel thicknesses. Our findings are…
The potential barrier height at the interface formed by a metal contact and multiple one-dimensional (1D) quasi-ballistic channels in field-effect transistors (FETs) is evaluated across different carbon nanotube and nanowire device technologies by means of a Landauer-Büttiker-based extraction methodology (LBM) adapted for multiple 1D-channels. The extraction methodology yields values for an effective Schottky barrier height and a gate coupling coefficient, an indicator of the device working at the quantum capacitance limit. The novel LBM-based approach embracing the mechanisms in 1D electronic…
Two key subjects stand out in the pursuit of semiconductor research: material quality and contact technology. The fledging field of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) faces a number of challenges in both efforts. This work attempts to establish a connection between the two by examining the gate-dependent conductance of few-layer (1-5L) WSe2 field effect devices. Measurements and modeling of the subgap regime reveal Schottky barrier transistor behavior. We show that transmission through the contact barrier is dominated by thermionic field emission (TFE) at room temperature…
Here, we report the observation of a hitherto unreported optoelectronic effect, namely a light-induced diode-like response in multi-layered MoSe$_2$ field-effect transistors whose sense of current rectification is controllable through a gate voltage. We argue, through numerical simulations, that this behavior results from the difference in the size of the Schottky barriers between drain and source metal contacts. Each barrier can be modeled as a Schottky diode but with opposite senses of current rectification between them, with the diode response resulting from the light induced promotion of p…
In this paper, we present experimental results and simulation data of an electrostatically doped and therefore voltage-programmable, planar, CMOS-compatible field-effect transistor (FET) structure. This planar device is based on our previously published Si-nanowire (SiNW) technology. Schottky barrier source/drain (S/D) contacts and a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology platform are the key features of this dual-gated but single channel universal FET. The combination of two electrically independent gates, one back-gate for S/D Schottky barrier modulation as well as channel formation to establ…
Understanding of the electrical contact properties of semiconductor nanowire (NW) field effect transistors (FETs) plays a crucial role in employing semiconducting NWs as building blocks for future nanoelectronic devices and in the study of fundamental physics problems. Here, we report on a study of the contact properties of Ti/Au, a widely used contact metal combination, to individual InSb NWs via both two-probe and four-probe transport measurements. We show that a Schottky barrier of height $Φ_{\rm{SB}}\sim20\ \rm{meV}$ is present at the metal-InSb NW interfaces and its effective height is ga…
The Effect of Dielectric Capping on Few-Layer Phosphorene Transistors: Tuning the Schottky Barrier Heights
磷烯是一种独特的具有二维层状结构的单元素半导体。在这封信中，我们研究了机械剥离的少层磷烯顶栅晶体管的行为。我们实现了144 mA/mm的高导通电流和95.6 cm 2/Vs的空穴迁移率。我们沉积Al 2 O3原子层沉积（ALD）和研究的电介质覆盖的影响。我们观察到，晶体管的极性交替从p型到双极与Al 2 O 3生长在顶部。我们将这种转变归因于金属接触边缘处的电子和空穴的有效肖特基势垒高度的变化，这源于ALD电介质中的固定电荷。
Solution processed field-effect transistors based on single crystalline silicon nanowires (Si NWs) with metal Schottky contacts are demonstrated. The semiconducting layer was deposited from a nanowire ink formulation at room temperature. The devices with 230nm thick SiO2 gate insulating layers show excellent output current-voltage characteristics with early saturation voltages under 2 volts, constant saturation current and exceptionally low dependence of saturation voltage with the gate field. Operational principles of these devices are markedly different from traditional ohmic-contact field-e…
We report the multi-scale modeling and design of a gate-defined single-electron transistor in a MoS$_{2}$ bilayer. By combining density-functional theory and finite-element analysis, we design a surface gate structure to electrostatically define and tune a quantum dot and its associated tunnel barriers in the MoS$_{2}$ bilayer. Our approach suggests new pathways for the creation of novel quantum electronic devices in two-dimensional materials.
Engineering Schottky Barrier in Black Phosphorus field effect devices for spintronic applications
黑磷（BP）是近年来发现的一种很有前途的二维直接带隙半导体材料。在这里，我们报告的双极场效应晶体管的行为多层BP铁磁隧道接触。通过使用TiO ${_2}$ /Co接触，我们观察到肖特基势垒降低< 50 meV，这可以通过栅极电压进一步调节。突出地，在BP器件中实现了良好的晶体管性能，其中漏极电流调制在四到六个数量级上。在室温下，空穴和电子的载流子迁移率分别为$\sim$ 155和0.18 cm ${^2}$ V ${^{-1}}$ s ${^{-1}}$.此外，磁阻计算表明，与施加的栅极电压的BP设备的电阻是在适当的范围内注入和检测自旋极化的空穴。我们的研究结果表明，工程BP nanolayered器件的有效的纳米电子和自旋电子学应用的前景。
An increase in power consumption necessitates a low-power circuit technology to extend Moore's law. Low-power transistors, such as tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs), negative-capacitance field-effect transistors (NC-FETs), and Dirac-source field-effect transistors (DS-FETs), have been realised to break the thermionic limit of the subthreshold swing (SS). However, a low-power diode rectifier, which breaks the thermionic limit of an ideality factor (n) of 1 at room temperature, has not been proposed yet. In this study, we have realised a DS Schottky diode, which exhibits a steep-slope char…
Cryogenic low noise amplifiers based on high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are widely used in applications such as radio astronomy, deep space communications, and quantum computing, and the physical mechanisms governing the microwave noise figure are therefore of practical interest. In particular, the contribution of thermal noise from the gate at cryogenic temperatures remains unclear owing to a lack of experimental measurements of thermal resistance under these conditions. Here, we report measurements of gate junction temperature and thermal resistance in a HEMT at cryogenic and room…
We prepare twist-controlled resonant tunneling transistors consisting of monolayer (Gr) and Bernal bilayer (BGr) graphene electrodes separated by a thin layer of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The resonant conditions are achieved by closely aligning the crystallographic orientation of the graphene electrodes, which leads to momentum conservation for tunneling electrons at certain bias voltages. Under such conditions, negative differential conductance (NDC) can be achieved. Application of in-plane magnetic field leads to electrons acquiring additional momentum during the tunneling process, whic…
Proximity orbital and spin-orbit effects of bilayer graphene on monolayer WSe$_2$ are investigated from first-principles. We find that the built-in electric field induces an orbital band gap of about 10 meV in bilayer graphene. Remarkably, the proximity spin-orbit splitting for holes is two orders of magnitude---the spin-orbit splitting of the valence band at K is about 2 meV---more than for electrons. Effectively, holes experience spin-valley locking due to the strong proximity of the lower graphene layer to WSe$_2$. However, applying an external transverse electric field of some 1 V/nm, coun…
We show the operation of a Cu/Al_2O_3/Cu/n-Si hot-electron transistor for the straightforward determination of a metal/semiconductor energy barrier height even at temperatures below carrier-freeze out in the semiconductor. The hot-electron spectroscopy measurements return a fairly temperature independent value for the Cu/n-Si barrier of 0.66 $\pm$ 0.04 eV at temperatures below 180 K, in substantial accordance with mainstream methods based on complex fittings of either current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements. The Cu/n-Si hot-electron transistors exhibit an OFF current o…
We study theoretically the electron current across a monolayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride/bilayer graphene tunnelling junction in an external magnetic field perpendicular to the layers. We show that change in effective tunnelling barrier width for electrons on different graphene layers of bilayer graphene, coupled with the fact that its Landau level wave functions are not equally distributed amongst the layers with a distribution that is reversed between the two valleys, lead to valley polarisation of the tunnelling current. We estimate that valley polarisation $\sim 70\%$ can be achieve…
We report the fabrication of low-leakage rectifying Pt and Au Schottky diodes and Au-gated metal-semiconductor field effect transistors (MESFETs) on n-type SrTiO3 thin films grown by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy. In agreement with previous studies, we find that compared to Pt, Au provides a higher Schottky barrier height with SrTiO3. As a result of the large dielectric constant of SrTiO3 and the large Schottky barrier height of Au, the Au-gated MESFETs are able to modulate ~1.6 x 1014 cm-2 electron density, the highest modulation yet achieved using metal gates in any material system. These ME…
The two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been proposed as candidates for the channel material in future field effect transistor designs. The heterophase design which utilizes the metallic T- or T' phase of the TMD as contacts to the semiconducting H phase channel has shown promising results in terms of bringing down the contact resistance of the device. In this work, we use ab-initio calculations to demonstrate how atomic-scale and quantum effects influence the ballistic transport properties in such heterophase transistors with channel lengths up to 20 nm. We investigat…
This work deals with the electron beam irradiation of the Schottky metal contacts in monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS$_2$) field-effect transistors (FETs). We show that the exposure of the Ti/Au source/drain leads to an electron beam improves the transistor conductance. We simulate the path of the electrons in the device and show that most of the beam energy is absorbed in the metal contacts. Hence, we propose that the transistor current enhancement is due to thermally induced interfacial reactions that lower the contact Schottky barriers. We also show that the electron beam conditioning of…
We demonstrate a vertical field-effect transistor based on a graphene/MoSe2 van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure. The vdW interface between the graphene and MoSe2 exhibits a Schottky barrier with an ideality factor of around 1.3, suggesting a high-quality interface. Owing to the low density of states in graphene, the position of the Fermi level in the graphene can be strongly modulated by an external electric field. Therefore, the Schottky barrier height at the graphene/MoSe2 vdW interface is also modulated. We demonstrate a large current ON-OFF ratio of 10^5. These results point to the potenti…
Although monolayer black phosphorus (BP) or phosphorene has been successfully exfoliated and its optical properties have been explored, most of electrical performance of the devices is demonstrated on few-layer phosphorene and ultra-thin BP films. In this paper, we study the channel length scaling of ultra-thin BP field-effect transistors (FETs), and discuss a scheme for using various contact metals to change transistor characteristics. Through studying transistor behaviors with various channel lengths, the contact resistance can be extracted from the transfer length method (TLM). With differe…
Two-dimensional material-based field effect transistors (2DM-FETs) are playing a revolutionary role in electronic devices. However, after years of development, no device model can match the Pao-Sah model for standard silicon-based transistors in terms of physical accuracy and computational efficiency to support large-scale integrated circuit design. One remaining critical obstacle is the contacts of 2DM-FETs. In order to self-consistently include the contact effect in the current model, it is necessary to perform self-consistent calculations, which is a fatal flaw for applications that priorit…
The valley degree of freedom of electrons in solids has been proposed as a new type of information carriers beyond the electronic charge and spin. Recent experimental demonstrations of the optical orientation of the valley polarization and generation of the valley current through the valley Hall effect in monolayer MoS2 have shown the potential of two-dimensional semiconductor transition metal dichalcogenides for valley based electronic and optoelectronic applications. The valley Hall conductivity in monolayer MoS2, a non-centrosymmetric crystal, however, cannot be easily tuned, presenting a c…
To explore the potential of field-effect transistors (FETs) based on monolayers of the two-dimensional semiconducting channel(SC) for spintronics, the two most important issues are to ensure the formation of variable low resistive tunnel ferromagnetic contacts(FC), and to preserve intrinsic properties of the SC during fabrication. Large Schottky barriers lead to the formation of high resistive contacts and methods adopted to control the barriers often alter the intrinsic properties of the SC. This work aims at addressing both issues in fully encapsulated monolayer WSe$_2$ FETs by using bi-laye…
Bilayer graphene is a promising material for radio-frequency transistors because its energy gap might result in a better current saturation than the monolayer graphene. Because the great deal of interest in this technology, especially for flexible radio-frequency applications, gaining control of it requires the formulation of appropriate models for the drain current, charge and capacitance. In this work we have developed them for a dual-gated bilayer graphene field-effect transistor. A drift-diffusion mechanism for the carrier transport has been considered coupled with an appropriate field-eff…
In a continuous search for the energy-efficient electronic switches, a great attention is focused on tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) demonstrating an abrupt dependence of the source-drain current on the gate voltage. Among all TFETs, those based on one-dimensional (1D) semiconductors exhibit the steepest current switching due to the singular density of states near the band edges, though the current in 1D structures is pretty low. In this paper, we propose a TFET based on 2D graphene bilayer which demonstrates a record steep subthreshold slope enabled by van Hove singularities in the de…
Dirac semimetals are expected to forbid the manifestation of the circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) because of their crystal inversion symmetry. Here, we report the observation of the CPGE in Cd3As2 nanobelt field effect transistors, when the photoexcitation is focused in the vicinity of the metal contacts up to room temperature. We attribute the CPGE to the Schottky electric field induced symmetry breaking, which results in the photocurrent modulation by circularly polarized photoexcitation via spin-momentum locking. The hypothesis is supported by a suite of experiments including spatially …
We exploit scanning probe controlled domain patterning in a ferroelectric top layer to induce nonvolatile modulation of the conduction characteristic of monolayer MoS$_2$ between a transistor and a junction state. In the presence of a domain wall, MoS$_2$ exhibits rectified I-V that is well described by the thermionic emission model. The induced Schottky barrier height varies from 0.38 eV to 0.57 eV and is tunabe by a SiO$_2$ global back-gate, while the tuning range of depends sensitively on the conduction band tail trapping states. Our work points to a new route to achieving programmable func…
A low Schottky barrier height (SBH) at source/drain contact is essential for achieving high drive current in atomic layer MoS2 channel based field-effect transistors. Approaches such as choosing metals with appropriate work functions and chemical doping are employed previously to improve the carrier injection from the contact electrodes to the channel and to mitigates the SBH between the MoS2 and metal. Recent experiments demonstrate significant SBH reduction when graphene layer is inserted between metal slab (Ti and Ni) and MoS2. However, the physical or chemical origin of this phenomenon is …
