Search

We report the fabrication of hexagonal-boron-nitride (hBN) encapsulated multi-terminal WSe$_2$ Hall bars with 2D/2D low-temperature Ohmic contacts as a platform for investigating the two-dimensional (2D) metal-insulator transition. We demonstrate that the WSe$_2$ devices exhibit Ohmic behavior down to 0.25 K and at low enough excitation voltages to avoid current-heating effects. Additionally, the high-quality hBN-encapsulated WSe$_2$ devices in ideal Hall-bar geometry enable us to accurately determine the carrier density. Measurements of the temperature ($T$) and density ($n_s$) dependence of the conductivity $\sigma(T,n_s)$ demonstrate scaling behavior consistent with a metal-insulator quantum phase transition driven by electron-electron interactions, but where disorder-induced local magnetic moments are also present. Our findings pave the way for further studies of the fundamental quantum mechanical properties of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides using the same contact engineering., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures + Supporting Information (4 pages, 3 figures)

In search of an improved strategy to form low resistance contacts to MoS2 and related semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, we use ab initio density functional electronic structure calculations in order to determine the equilibrium geometry and electronic structure of MoO3/MoS2 and MoO2/MoS2 bilayers. Our results indicate that, besides a rigid band shift associated with charge transfer, the presence of molybdenum oxide modifies the electronic structure of MoS2 very little. We find that the charge transfer in the bilayer provides a sufficient degree of hole doping to MoS2, resulting in a highly transparent contact region., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures

We study the rise and decay times in BP-MoS2 heterojunctions through gate- and wavelength-dependent scanning photocurrent measurements. Our results have shown that the Schottky barrier at the MoS2-metal interface plays an important role in the photoresponse dynamics of the heterojunction. When the MoS2 channel is in the on-state, photo-excited carriers can tunnel through the narrow depletion region at the MoS2-metal interface, leading to a short carrier transit time. A response time constant of 13 {\mu}s has been achieved in both the rising and decaying regions regardless of the incident laser wavelength, which is comparable or higher than those of other BP-MoS2 heterojunctions as well as BP and MoS2 based phototransistors. On the other hand, when the MoS2 channel is in the off-state the resulting sizeable Schottky barrier and depletion width make it difficult for photo-excited carriers to overcome the barrier. This significantly delays the carrier transit time and thus the photoresponse speed, leading to a wavelength-dependent response time since the photo-excited carriers induced by short wavelength photons have a higher probability to overcome the Schottky barrier at the MoS2-metal interface than long wavelength photons. These studies not only shed light on the fundamental understanding of photoresponse dynamics in BP-MoS2 heterojunctions, but also open new avenues for engineering the interfaces between two-dimensional (2D) materials and metal contacts to reduce the response time of 2D materials based optoelectronic devices., Comment: 4 figures and 17 pages

We report a new approach to integrating high-\k{appa} dielectrics in both bottom- and top-gated MoS2 field-effect transistors (FETs) through thermal oxidation and mechanical assembly of layered twodimensional (2D) TaS2. Combined X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), optical microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements confirm that multilayer TaS2 flakes can be uniformly transformed to Ta2O5 with a high dielectric constant of ~ 15.5 via thermal oxidation, while preserving the geometry and ultra-smooth surfaces of 2D TMDs. Top-gated MoS2 FETs fabricated using the thermally oxidized Ta2O5 as gate dielectric demonstrate a high current on/off ratio approaching 106, a subthreshold swing (SS) down to 61 mV/dec, and a field-effect mobility exceeding 60 cm2V-1 s-1 at room temperature, indicating high dielectric quality and low interface trap density.

We report a new strategy for fabricating 2D/2D low-resistance ohmic contacts for a variety of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) using van der Waals assembly of substitutionally doped TMDs as drain/source contacts and TMDs with no intentional doping as channel materials. We demonstrate that few-layer WSe2 field-effect transistors (FETs) with 2D/2D contacts exhibit low contact resistances of ~ 0.3 k ohm.um, high on/off ratios up to > 109, and high drive currents exceeding 320 uA um-1. These favorable characteristics are combined with a two-terminal field-effect hole mobility ~ 2x102 cm2 V-1 s-1 at room temperature, which increases to >2x103 cm2 V-1 s-1 at cryogenic temperatures. We observe a similar performance also in MoS2 and MoSe2 FETs with 2D/2D drain and source contacts. The 2D/2D low-resistance ohmic contacts presented here represent a new device paradigm that overcomes a significant bottleneck in the performance of TMDs and a wide variety of other 2D materials as the channel materials in post-silicon electronics., Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, Nano Lett. Accepted

We report the fabrication of both n-type and p-type WSe2 field effect transistors with hexagonal boron nitride passivated channels and ionic-liquid (IL)-gated graphene contacts. Our transport measurements reveal intrinsic channel properties including a metal-insulator transition at a characteristic conductivity close to the quantum conductance e2/h, a high ON/OFF ratio of >107 at 170 K, and large electron and hole mobility of ~200 cm2V-1s-1 at 160 K. Decreasing the temperature to 77 K increases mobility of electrons to ~330 cm2V-1s-1 and that of holes to ~270 cm2V-1s-1. We attribute our ability to observe the intrinsic, phonon limited conduction in both the electron and hole channels to the drastic reduction of the Schottky barriers between the channel and the graphene contact electrodes using IL gating. We elucidate this process by studying a Schottky diode consisting of a single graphene/WSe2 Schottky junction. Our results indicate the possibility to utilize chemically or electrostatically highly doped graphene for versatile, flexible and transparent low-resistance Ohmic contacts to a wide range of quasi-2D semiconductors. KEYWORDS: MoS2, WSe2, field-effect transistors, graphene, Schottky barrier, ionic-liquid gate, Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Nano Lett. 2014

We report low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy characterization of MoSe2 crystals, and the fabrication and electrical characterization of MoSe2 field-effect transistors on both SiO2 and parylene-C substrates. We find that the multilayer MoSe2 devices on parylene-C show a room temperature mobility close to the mobility of bulk MoSe2 (100 cm2V-1s-1 - 160 cm2V-1s-1), which is significantly higher than that on SiO2 substrate (~50 cm2V-1s-1). The room temperature mobility on both types of substrates are nearly thickness independent. Our variable temperature transport measurements reveal a metal-insulator transition at a characteristic conductivity of e2/h. The mobility of MoSe2 devices extracted from the metallic region on both SiO2 and parylene-C increases up to ~ 500 cm2V-1s-1 as the temperature decreases to ~ 100 K, with the mobility of MoSe2 on SiO2 increasing more rapidly. In spite of the notable variation of charged impurities as indicated by the strongly sample dependent low temperature mobility, the mobility of all MoSe2 devices on SiO2 converges above 200 K, indicating that the high temperature (> 200 K) mobility in these devices is nearly independent of the charged impurities. Our atomic force microscopy study of SiO2 and parylene-C substrates further rule out the surface roughness scattering as a major cause of the substrate dependent mobility. We attribute the observed substrate dependence of MoSe2 mobility primarily to the surface polar optical phonon scattering originating from the SiO2 substrate, which is nearly absent in MoSe2 devices on parylene-C substrate., Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ACS Nano, 2014

We report the fabrication of ionic liquid (IL) gated field-effect transistors (FETs) consisting of bilayer and few-layer MoS2. Our transport measurements indicate that the electron mobility about 60 cm2V-1s-1 at 250 K in ionic liquid gated devices exceeds significantly that of comparable back-gated devices. IL-FETs display a mobility increase from about 100 cm2V-1s-1 at 180 K to about 220 cm2V-1s-1 at 77 K in good agreement with the true channel mobility determined from four-terminal measurements, ambipolar behavior with a high ON/OFF ratio >107 (104) for electrons (holes), and a near ideal sub-threshold swing of about 50 mV/dec at 250 K. We attribute the observed performance enhancement, specifically the increased carrier mobility that is limited by phonons, to the reduction of the Schottky barrier at the source and drain electrode by band bending caused by the ultrathin ionic-liquid dielectric layer., Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures, ACS Nano, ASAP, 2013

We report electrical characterization of monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) devices using a thin layer of polymer electrolyte consisting of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and lithium perchlorate (LiClO4) as both a contact-barrier reducer and channel mobility booster. We find that bare MoS2 devices (without polymer electrolyte) fabricated on Si/SiO2 have low channel mobility and large contact resistance, both of which severely limit the field-effect mobility of the devices. A thin layer of PEO/ LiClO4 deposited on top of the devices not only substantially reduces the contact resistance but also boost the channel mobility, leading up to three-orders-of-magnitude enhancement of the field-effect mobility of the device. When the polymer electrolyte is used as a gate medium, the MoS2 field-effect transistors exhibit excellent device characteristics such as a near ideal subthreshold swing and an on/off ratio of 106 as a result of the strong gate-channel coupling., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, accepted by J. Phys. D

A simple one-stage solution-based method was developed to produce graphene nanoribbons by sonicating graphite powder in organic solutions with polymer surfactant. The graphene nanoribbons were deposited on silicon substrate, and characterized by Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Single-layer and few-layer graphene nanoribbons with a width ranging from sub-10 nm to tens of nm and length ranging from hundreds of nm to 1 {\mu}m were routinely observed. Electrical transport properties of individual graphene nanoribbons were measured in both the back-gate and polymer-electrolyte top-gate configurations. The mobility of the graphene nanoribbons was found to be over an order of magnitude higher when measured in the latter than in the former configuration (without the polymer electrolyte), which can be attributed to the screening of the charged impurities by the counter-ions in the polymer electrolyte. This finding suggests that the charge transport in these solution-produced graphene nanoribbons is largely limited by charged impurity scattering., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Nanotechnology 2011

We report electrical transport measurements on a suspended ultra-low-disorder graphene nanoribbon(GNR) with nearly atomically smooth edges that reveal a high mobility exceeding 3000 cm2 V-1 s-1 and an intrinsic band gap. The experimentally derived bandgap is in quantitative agreement with the results of our electronic-structure calculations on chiral GNRs with comparable width taking into account the electron-electron interactions, indicating that the origin of the bandgap in non-armchair GNRs is partially due to the magnetic zigzag edges., Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures

We have fabricated suspended few layer (1-3 layers) graphene nanoribbon field effect transistors from unzipped multiwall carbon nanotubes. Electrical transport measurements show that current-annealing effectively removes the impurities on the suspended graphene nanoribbons, uncovering the intrinsic ambipolar transfer characteristic of graphene. Further increasing the annealing current creates a narrow constriction in the ribbon, leading to the formation of a large band-gap and subsequent high on/off ratio (which can exceed 104). Such fabricated devices are thermally and mechanically stable: repeated thermal cycling has little effect on their electrical properties. This work shows for the first time that ambipolar field effect characteristics and high on/off ratios at room temperature can be achieved in relatively wide graphene nanoribbon (15 nm ~50 nm) by controlled current annealing., Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Nanotechnology (2011)