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Transferred via contacts as a platform for ideal two-dimensional transistors

Nature Electronics volume 2, pages 187–194 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two-dimensional semiconductors have a number of valuable properties that could be used to create novel electronic devices. However, creating 2D devices with good contacts and stable performance has proved challenging. Here we show that transferred via contacts, made from metal embedded in insulating hexagonal boron nitride and dry transferred onto 2D semiconductors, can be used to create high-quality 2D transistors. The approach prevents damage induced by direct metallization and allows full glovebox processing, providing a clean, stable and damage-free platform for 2D device fabrication. Using the approach, we create field-effect transistors (FETs) from bilayer p-type tungsten diselenide (WSe2) that exhibit high hole mobility and low contact resistance. The fabricated devices also exhibit high current and stability for over two months of measurements. Furthermore, the low contact resistance and clean channel allow us to create a nearly ideal top-gated p-FET with a subthreshold swing of 64 mV per decade at 290 K.

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Fig. 1: Fabrication process for TVCs and conventional contacts.
Fig. 2: Electrical properties of bilayer WSe2 with TVCs at 295 K.
Fig. 3: Contact properties of bilayer WSe2 p-FETs with TVCs.
Fig. 4: Low-temperature measurements for a back-gated bilayer WSe2 p-FET with TVCs.
Fig. 5: Effects of direct metallization and glovebox processing.
Fig. 6: Double-gated bilayer WSe2 with TVCs as a nearly ideal 2D p-FET.

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The data that support the findings within this paper are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through a CAREER Award (ECCS-1752401) and by the Center for Precision Assembly of Superstratic and Superatomic Solids (DMR-1420634). This work is also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea through the Global Research Laboratory (GRL) program (2016K1A1A2912707) and Research Fellow program (2018R1A6A3A11045864).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Younghun Jung, Min Sup Choi.

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Younghun Jung, Min Sup Choi, Bumho Kim & James Hone

  2. SKKU Advanced Institute of Nano Technology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

    Min Sup Choi & Won Jong Yoo

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Ankur Nipane, Abhinandan Borah & James T. Teherani

  4. Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Amirali Zangiabadi

  5. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi & Kenji Watanabe

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  1. Younghun Jung
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Contributions

Y.J., M.S.C., J.H. and J.T.T. conceived the research and designed the experiments. Y.J. and M.S.C. fabricated and measured the devices under J.T.T.’s supervision. A.N. and A.B. contributed to the data analysis and manuscript revision. B.K. contributed to the Hall measurements. A.Z. performed TEM measurements. T.T. and K.W. contributed h-BN material. W.J.Y., J.H. and J.T.T. contributed to discussions of the results. Y.J., M.S.C. and J.T.T. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to James T. Teherani.

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Jung, Y., Choi, M.S., Nipane, A. et al. Transferred via contacts as a platform for ideal two-dimensional transistors. Nat Electron 2, 187–194 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-019-0245-y

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