Monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide Transistors with Single-Atom-Thick Gates.

Two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are unique candidates for the development of next-generation electronic devices. However, the large contact resistance between metal and the monolayer TMDs have significantly limited the devices' performance. Also, the integration of ultrathin high- k dielectric layers with TMDs remains difficult due to the lack of dangling bonds on the surface of TMDs. We present monolayer molybdenum disulfide field-effect transistors with bottom local gates consisting of monolayer graphene. The atomic-level thickness and surface roughness of graphene facilitate the growth of high-quality ultrathin HfO2 and suppress gate leakage. Strong displacement fields above 8 V/nm can be applied using a single graphene gate to electrostatically dope the MoS2, which reduces the contact resistances between Ni and monolayer MoS2 to 2.3 kΩ·μm at low gate voltages. The devices exhibit excellent switching characteristics including a near-ideal subthreshold slope of 64 millivolts per decade, low threshold voltage (∼0.5 V), high channel conductance (>100 μS/μm), and low hysteresis. Scaled devices with 50 and 14 nm channels as well as ultrathin (5 nm) gate dielectrics show effective immunity to short-channel effects. The device fabricated on flexible polymeric substrate also exhibits high performance and has a fully transparent channel region that is desirable in optical-related studies and practical applications.