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Transferred van der Waals metal electrodes for sub-1-nm MoS2 vertical transistors

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 342–347 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Vertical transistors—in which the channel length is determined by the thickness of the semiconductor—are of interest in the development of next-generation electronic devices. However, short-channel vertical devices are difficult to fabricate, because the high-energy metallization process typically results in damage to the contact region. Here we show that molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) vertical transistors with channel lengths down to one atomic layer can be created using a low-energy van der Waals metal integration technique. The approach uses prefabricated metal electrodes that are mechanically laminated and transferred on top of MoS2/graphene vertical heterostructures, leading to vertical field-effect transistors with on–off ratios of 26 and 103 for channel lengths of 0.65 nm and 3.60 nm, respectively. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy and low-temperature electrical measurements, we show that the improved electrical performance is the result of a high-quality metal–semiconductor interface, with minimized direct tunnelling current and Fermi-level pinning effect. The approach can also be extended to other layered materials (tungsten diselenide and tungsten disulfide), resulting in sub-3-nm p-type and n-type vertical transistors.

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Fig. 1: Device fabrication processes of MoS2 VFET and characterization of Au–2D interface.
Fig. 2: Transfer characteristics of MoS2 VFETs with evaporated and vdW metal electrodes.
Fig. 3: Temperature-dependent charge transport in the MoS2 VFETs.
Fig. 4: WSe2 and WS2 VFETs with evaporated and transferred metal electrodes.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Y.L. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 51991340, 51991341, 51802090 and 61874041) and from the Hunan Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (grant no. 812019037). L. Liao acknowledges financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2018YFA0703704). A.P. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 62090035 and U19A2090).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Devices of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Liting Liu, Lingan Kong, Qianyuan Li, Liwang Ren, Quanyang Tao, Jun Lin, Zhiwei Li, Yang Chen, Wanying Li, Wenjing Song, Zheyi Lu, Guoli Li, Lei Liao & Yuan Liu

  2. Key Laboratory for Micro-Nano Physics and Technology of Hunan Province, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Chenglin He, Siyu Li & Anlian Pan

  3. State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Xiangdong Yang, Bei Zhao & Xidong Duan

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  1. Liting Liu
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Contributions

Y.L. conceived and supervised the research. Y.L. and L. Liu designed the experiments. L. Liu performed the device fabrication, low-temperature measurement and data analysis. L.K., Q.L., L.R., Q.T., X.Y., J.L., Z. Li, W.L., W.S., G.L. and L. Liao contributed to device fabrication. L.K. and Q.T. contributed to the device electrical measurements. Y.C., L.K. and Z. Lu contributed to discussions and data analysis. Z. Li and W.S. contributed to the atomic force microscopy measurement. C.H., B.Z., X.Y., S.L., X.D. and A.P. contributed to the STM measurement. Y.L. and L. Liu co-wrote the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yuan Liu.

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Peer review information Nature Electronics thanks PingAn Hu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liu, L., Kong, L., Li, Q. et al. Transferred van der Waals metal electrodes for sub-1-nm MoS2 vertical transistors. Nat Electron 4, 342–347 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00566-0

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