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Field-effect transistors made from solution-grown two-dimensional tellurene

Nature Electronics volume 1, pages 228–236 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The reliable production of two-dimensional (2D) crystals is essential for the development of new technologies based on 2D materials. However, current synthesis methods suffer from a variety of drawbacks, including limitations in crystal size and stability. Here, we report the fabrication of large-area, high-quality 2D tellurium (tellurene) using a substrate-free solution process. Our approach can create crystals with process-tunable thickness, from a monolayer to tens of nanometres, and with lateral sizes of up to 100 µm. The chiral-chain van der Waals structure of tellurene gives rise to strong in-plane anisotropic properties and large thickness-dependent shifts in Raman vibrational modes, which is not observed in other 2D layered materials. We also fabricate tellurene field-effect transistors, which exhibit air-stable performance at room temperature for over two months, on/off ratios on the order of 106, and field-effect mobilities of about 700 cm2 V−1 s−1. Furthermore, by scaling down the channel length and integrating with high-k dielectrics, transistors with a significant on-state current density of 1 A mm−1 are demonstrated.

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Fig. 1: Solution-grown large-area 2D Te and material characterization.
Fig. 2: Solution processing for tellurene.
Fig. 3: Angle-resolved Raman spectra for 2D tellurene with different thicknesses.
Fig. 4: 2D tellurene FET device performance.
Fig. 5: High on-state current density in short-channel tellurene devices.

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Acknowledgements

W.Z.W. acknowledges the College of Engineering and School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University for startup support. W.Z.W. was partially supported by a grant from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Junior Faculty Enhancement Award Program. Part of the solution synthesis work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. CMMI-1663214). P.D.Y. was supported by the NSF/AFOSR 2DARE Program, ARO and SRC. Q.W. and M.J.K. were supported by the Center for Low Energy Systems Technology (LEAST) and the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN). Y.L. acknowledges support from Resnick Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship at Caltech, and startup support from UT Austin. Y.L. and W.A.G. were supported as part of the Computational Materials Sciences Program funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (award no. DE-SC00014607). This work used the computational resources of NREL (sponsored by DOE EERE), XSEDE (NSF ACI-1053575), NERSC (DOE DE-AC02-05CH11231) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin. The authors thank F. Fan for discussions.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Yixiu Wang, Gang Qiu and Ruoxing Wang

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Yixiu Wang, Ruoxing Wang & Wenzhuo Wu

  2. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Gang Qiu, Yuchen Du & Peide D. Ye

  3. Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Gang Qiu, Yuchen Du, Xianfan Xu, Peide D. Ye & Wenzhuo Wu

  4. School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Shouyuan Huang, Moon J. Kim & Xianfan Xu

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

    Qingxiao Wang

  6. The Resnick Sustainability Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Yuanyue Liu & William A. Goddard III

  7. Materials and Process Simulation Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Yuanyue Liu

  8. Texas Materials Institute, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Yuanyue Liu

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Contributions

W.Z.W. and P.D.Y. conceived and supervised the project. W.Z.W., P.D.Y., Y.X.W. and G.Q. designed the experiments. Y.X.W. and R.X.W. synthesized the material. G.Q. and Y.X.W. fabricated the devices. G.Q. and Y.C.D. performed the electrical and optical characterization. S.Y.H. and Y.X.W. performed the Raman measurements under the supervision of X.F.X. and W.Z.W. Q.W. and M.J.K. performed TEM characterization. Y.L. carried out the first-principles calculations under the supervision of W.A.G. Y.X.W. and G.Q. conducted the experiments. W.Z.W., P.D.Y., Y.X.W., G.Q. and R.X.W. analysed the data. W.Z.W. and P.D.Y. wrote the manuscript. Y.X.W., G.Q. and R.X.W. contributed equally to this work. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to Peide D. Ye or Wenzhuo Wu.

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Supplementary Note 1, Supplementary Figures 1–26 and Supplementary Table 1

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Wang, Y., Qiu, G., Wang, R. et al. Field-effect transistors made from solution-grown two-dimensional tellurene. Nat Electron 1, 228–236 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-018-0058-4

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