Coulomb Screening and Scattering in Atomically Thin Transistors across Dimensional Crossover.

Layered two-dimensional dichalcogenides are potential candidates for post-silicon electronics. Here, we report insightfully experimental and theoretical studies on the fundamental Coulomb screening and scattering effects in these correlated systems, in response to the changes of three crucial Coulomb factors, including electric permittivity, interaction distance, and density of Coulomb impurities. We systematically collect and analyze the trends of electron mobility with respect to the above factors, realized by synergic modulations on channel thicknesses and gating modes in dual-gated MoS2 transistors with asymmetric dielectric cleanliness. Strict configurative form factors are developed to capture the subtle parametric changes across dimensional crossover. A full diagram of the carrier scattering mechanisms, in particular on the pronounced Coulomb scattering, is unfolded. Moreover, we clarify the presence of up to 40% discrepancy in mobility by considering the permittivity modification across dimensional crossover. The understanding is useful for exploiting atomically thin body transistors for advanced electronics.

Clean BN-Encapsulated 2D FETs with Lithography-Compatible Contacts.

Device passivation through ultraclean hexagonal BN encapsulation has proven to be one of the most effective ways of constructing high-quality devices with atomically thin semiconductors that preserve the ultraclean interface quality and intrinsic charge transport behavior. However, it remains challenging to integrate lithography-compatible contact electrodes with flexible distributions and patterns. Here, we report the feasibility of a straightforward integration of lithography-defined contacts into BN-encapsulated two-dimensional field-effect transistors (2D FETs), giving rise to overall device quality comparable to the state-of-the-art results from the painstaking pure dry transfer processing. The electronic characterization of FETs consisting of WSe2 and MoS2 channels reveals an extremely low scanning hysteresis of ∼2 mV on average, a low density of interfacial charged impurities of ∼1011 cm-2, and generally high charge mobilities over 1000 cm2 V-1 s-1 at low temperatures. The overall high device qualities verify the viability of directly integrating lithography-defined contacts into BN-encapsulated devices to exploit their intrinsic charge transport properties for advanced electronics.