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Remote modulation doping in van der Waals heterostructure transistors

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 664–670 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Doping is required to modulate the electrical properties of semiconductors but introduces impurities that lead to Coulomb scattering, which hampers charge transport. Such scattering is a particular issue in two-dimensional semiconductors because charged impurities are in close proximity to the atomically thin channel. Here we report the remote modulation doping of a two-dimensional transistor that consists of a band-modulated tungsten diselenide/hexagonal boron nitride/molybdenum disulfide heterostructure. The underlying molybdenum disulfide channel is remotely doped via controlled charge transfer from dopants on the tungsten diselenide surface. The modulation-doped device exhibits two-dimensional-confined charge transport and the suppression of impurity scattering, shown by increasing mobility with decreasing temperature. Our molybdenum disulfide modulation-doped field-effect transistors exhibit a room-temperature mobility of 60 cm2 V–1 s–1; in comparison, transistors that have been directly doped exhibit a mobility of 35 cm2 V–1 s–1.

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Fig. 1: Band-modulated WSe2/hBN/MoS2 heterostructure for remote doping.
Fig. 2: Remote modulation doping in WSe2/hBN/MoS2 heterostructures via charge transfer.
Fig. 3: Low-temperature transport measurements of MD MoS2 FETs.
Fig. 4: Temperature-dependent mobility behaviour and the related scattering mechanism.

Data availability

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

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea (2021M3H4A1A01079471, 2020R1A2C2009389, 2017R1A5A1014862 (SRC Program: vdWMRC center) and 2020M3H3A1105796) and the KU-KIST School Project. D.L. acknowledges support from the Basic Science Research Program through the NRF of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (2020R1I1A1A01071872). Y.D.K. and J.J.L. acknowledge support from the NRF of Korea (2021M3H4A1A03054856). Low-temperature measurements were supported by a grant from Kyung Hee University in 2019 (KHU-20192441).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Donghun Lee, Yoon Seok Kim, Yeon Ho Kim, Woong Huh, Jaeho Lee, Sungmin Park & Chul-Ho Lee

  2. Department of Physics, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Jea Jung Lee & Young Duck Kim

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Jong Chan Kim

  4. UNIST Central Research Facilities (UCRF), Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Hu Young Jeong

  5. Department of Information Display, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Young Duck Kim

  6. KHU-KIST Department of Converging Science and Technology, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Young Duck Kim

  7. Department of Integrative Energy Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Chul-Ho Lee

  8. Advanced Materials Research Division, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Chul-Ho Lee

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  1. Donghun Lee
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Contributions

C.-H.L. and D.L. conceived the idea and supervised the project. D.L. fabricated the devices and performed the measurements and data analysis. Y.S.K., W.H., J.L., S.P. and Y.H.K. assisted with the device fabrications. J.C.K. and H.Y.J. performed the cross-sectional high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis. D.L., J.J.L. and Y.D.K. carried out the low-temperature measurements. D.L. and C.-H.L. wrote the manuscript. All the authors contributed to discussions.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Donghun Lee or Chul-Ho Lee.

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

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Lee, D., Lee, J.J., Kim, Y.S. et al. Remote modulation doping in van der Waals heterostructure transistors. Nat Electron 4, 664–670 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00641-6

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