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Multi-terminal transport measurements of MoS2 using a van der Waals heterostructure device platform

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 534–540 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors such as MoS2 hold great promise for electrical, optical and mechanical devices and display novel physical phenomena. However, the electron mobility of mono- and few-layer MoS2 has so far been substantially below theoretically predicted limits, which has hampered efforts to observe its intrinsic quantum transport behaviours. Potential sources of disorder and scattering include defects such as sulphur vacancies in the MoS2 itself as well as extrinsic sources such as charged impurities and remote optical phonons from oxide dielectrics. To reduce extrinsic scattering, we have developed here a van der Waals heterostructure device platform where MoS2 layers are fully encapsulated within hexagonal boron nitride and electrically contacted in a multi-terminal geometry using gate-tunable graphene electrodes. Magneto-transport measurements show dramatic improvements in performance, including a record-high Hall mobility reaching 34,000 cm2 V–1 s–1 for six-layer MoS2 at low temperature, confirming that low-temperature performance in previous studies was limited by extrinsic interfacial impurities rather than bulk defects in the MoS2. We also observed Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations in high-mobility monolayer and few-layer MoS2. Modelling of potential scattering sources and quantum lifetime analysis indicate that a combination of short-range and long-range interfacial scattering limits the low-temperature mobility of MoS2.

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Figure 1: vdW device structure and interface characterization.
Figure 2: Gate-tunable and temperature-dependent graphene–MoS2 contacts.
Figure 3: Temperature, carrier density dependence of Hall mobility and scattering mechanism.
Figure 4: Observation of Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations in an hBN-encapsulated MoS2 device.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF, DMR-1122594), the NSF MRSEC programme through Columbia in the Center for Precision Assembly of Superstratic and Superatomic Solids (DMR-1420634) and in part by the FAME Center, one of six centres of STARnet, a Semiconductor Research Corporation programme sponsored by MARCO and DARPA. G-H.L. was supported by the Basic Science Research Program (NRF-2014R1A1A1004632) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean government Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and in part by the Yonsei University Future-Leading Research Initiative of 2014. P.Y.H. acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant DGE-0707428. Additional support was provided through funding and shared facilities via the Cornell Center for Materials Research NSF MRSEC programme (DMR-1120296). C.-H.L. was supported by Basic Science Research Program (NRF-2014R1A1A2055112) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korean Government Ministry of Education, and in part by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Institutional Program (2Z04490). F.P. and B.S.J. acknowledge support from the Center for Nanostructured Graphene (CNG), which is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (Project DNRF58). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by MEXT, Japan. T.T. acknowledges support from a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (grant no. 262480621) and Innovative Areas ‘NanoInformatics’ (grant no. 25106006) from JSPS. The high magnetic field measurements were performed at NHMFL. The authors thank A. Suslov, B.J. Pullum, J. Billings and T. Murphy for assistance with the experiments at NHMFL.

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Author notes

  1. Xu Cui, Gwan-Hyoung Lee and Young Duck Kim: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Xu Cui, Young Duck Kim, Ghidewon Arefe, Daniel A. Chenet, Xian Zhang, Lei Wang & James Hone

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, 120-749, Republic of Korea

    Gwan-Hyoung Lee

  3. School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853, New York, USA

    Pinshane Y. Huang & David A. Muller

  4. KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology, Korea University, Seoul, 136-701, Republic of Korea

    Chul-Ho Lee

  5. Department of Material Science and Engineering, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Fan Ye

  6. Center for Nanostructured Graphene (CNG), DTU Nanotech, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads, 345E, Kgs. Lyngby, 2800, Denmark

    Filippo Pizzocchero & Bjarke S. Jessen

  7. National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi

  8. Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Ithaca, 14853, New York, USA

    David A. Muller

  9. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 55455, Minnesota, USA

    Tony Low

  10. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Philip Kim

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Contributions

X.C. and G-H.L. designed the research project and supervised the experiment. X.C., G-H.L., Y.D.K., G.A., C-H.L., F.Y., F.P., B.S.J. and L.W. fabricated the devices. X.C., G-H.L. and Y.D.K. performed device measurements with supervision from P.K. and J.H. X.C., G-H.L., G.A. and X.Z. performed optical spectroscopy and data analysis. D.A.C. grew and prepared the CVD MoS2 sample. T.L. performed theoretical calculations. K.W. and T.T. prepared hBN samples. P.Y.H. and D.A.M. performed TEM analyses. X.C., G-H.L., Y.D.K. and J.H. analysed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Gwan-Hyoung Lee or James Hone.

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Cui, X., Lee, GH., Kim, Y. et al. Multi-terminal transport measurements of MoS2 using a van der Waals heterostructure device platform. Nature Nanotech 10, 534–540 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.70

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