Schottky Barrier Height Engineering for Electrical Contacts of Multilayered MoS2 Transistors with Reduction of Metal-Induced Gap States
- 31 May 2018
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in ACS Nano
- Vol. 12 (6), 6292-6300
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.8b03331
Abstract
The difficulty in Schottky barrier height (SBH) control arising from Fermi-level pinning (FLP) at electrical contacts is a bottleneck in designing high-performance nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics based on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). For electrical contacts of multi-layered MoS2, the Fermi level on the metal side is strongly pinned near the conduction-band edge of MoS2, which makes most MoS2-channel field-effect transistors (MoS2 FETs) exhibit n-type transfer characteristics regardless of their source/drain (S/D) contact metals. In this work, SBH engineering is conducted to control the SBH of electrical top contacts of multi-layered MoS2 by introducing a metal–interlayer–semiconductor (MIS) structure which induces the Fermi-level unpinning by a reduction of metal-induced gap states (MIGS). An ultra-thin titanium dioxide (TiO2) interlayer is inserted between the metal contact and the multi-layered MoS2 to alleviate FLP and tune the SBH at the S/D contacts of multi-layered MoS2 FETs. A significant alleviation of FLP is demonstrated as MIS structures with 1-nm-thick TiO2 interlayers are introduced into the S/D contacts. Consequently, the pinning factor (S) increases from 0.02 for metal–semiconductor (MS) contacts to 0.24 for MIS contacts, and the controllable SBH range is widened from 37 meV (50 – 87 meV) to 344 meV (107 – 451 meV). Furthermore, the Fermi-level unpinning effect is reinforced as the interlayer becomes thicker. This work widens the room for modifying electrical characteristics of contacts by providing a platform to control the SBH through a simple process as well as understandings of the FLP at the electrical top contacts of multi-layered MoS2.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Research Foundation of Korea (2016M3A7B4910426, 2017R1A2B4006460)
- Semiconductor Design Education Center, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
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