Graphene interconnects fully encapsulated in layered insulator hexagonal boron nitride.

We demonstrate improvements in the electrical performance of graphene interconnects with full encapsulation by lattice-matching layered insulator, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). A novel layer-based transfer method is developed to assemble the top passivating layer of h-BN on the graphene surface to construct the h-BN/graphene/h-BN heterostructures. The encapsulated graphene interconnects (EGIs) are characterized and compared with graphene interconnects on either SiO2 or h-BN substrates with no top passivating h-BN layer. We observe significant improvements in both the maximum current density and breakdown voltage in EGIs. Compared with the uncovered structures, EGIs also show an appreciable increase (∼67%) in power density at breakdown. These improvements are achieved without degrading the carrier transport characteristics in graphene wires. In addition, EGIs exhibit a minimal environment impact, showing electrical behavior insensitive to ambient conditions.

Layered semiconductor molybdenum disulfide nanomembrane based Schottky-barrier solar cells.

We demonstrate Schottky-barrier solar cells employing a stack of layer-structured semiconductor molybdenum disulfide (MoS(2)) nanomembranes, synthesized by the chemical-vapor-deposition method, as the critical photoactive layer. An MoS(2) nanomembrane forms a Schottky-barrier with a metal contact by the layer-transfer process onto an indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrate. Two vibrational modes in MoS(2) nanomembranes, E(1)(2g) (in-plane) and A(1g) (perpendicular-to-plane), were verified by Raman spectroscopy. With a simple stacked structure of ITO-MoS(2)-Au, the fabricated solar cell demonstrates a photo-conversion efficiency of 0.7% for ~110 nm MoS(2) and 1.8% for ~220 nm MoS(2). The improvement is attributed to a substantial increase in photonic absorption. The MoS(2) nanomembrane exhibits efficient photo-absorption in the spectral region of 350-950 nm, as confirmed by the external quantum efficiency. A sizable increase in MoS(2) thickness results in only minor change in Mott-Schottky behavior, indicating that defect density is insensitive to nanomembrane thickness attributed to the dangling-bond-free layered structure.