Two-dimensional electric-double-layer Esaki diode
Source abstract
Abstract
Abstract Two-dimensional van der Waals materials offer unique advantages for the development of band-to-band tunneling devices given their lack of dangling bonds, atomically flat thickness and steep band edges. Here, we present the experimental demonstration of an electric double layer (EDL) Esaki junction in synthetic WSe2 thin films. A Si-compatible process is developed for the fabrication of nanoscale FETs utilizing molecular beam epitaxy of WSe2 performed directly on top of a high-κ dielectric at back-end-of-line-friendly temperatures (<550 °C). Degenerate and abrupt doping profiles are obtained by modulating the electron/cation and hole/anion EDLs formed at the interface between a tens-of-nanometer long WSe2 channel and a solid polymer electrolyte, polyethylene oxide:cesium perchlorate (PEO:CsClO4). Numerical simulations are used to determine the bias dependence of the equilibrium ion and carrier density profiles. The EDL-doped tunnel diode exhibits repeatable, gate-tunable band-to-band tunneling with negative differential resistance in the forward bias regime at temperatures up to 140 K, and strong conduction in reverse bias. A maximum peak-to-valley current ratio of 3.5 is measured at 110 K.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design · Nanowire Synthesis and Applications · 2D Materials and Applications
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
References (40)
Show source-provided references
1. Esaki, L. New phenomenon in narrow Germanium p–n junctions. Phys. Rev. 109, 603 (1958).10.1103/PhysRev.109.603 ↗
2. Seabaugh, A. C. & Zhang, Q. Low-voltage tunnel transistors for beyond CMOS logic. Proc. IEEE 98, 2095–2110 (2010).10.1109/JPROC.2010.2070470 ↗
3. Ionescu, A. M. & Riel, H. Tunnel field-effect transistors as energy-efficient electronic switches. Nature 479, 329–337 (2011).10.1038/nature10679 ↗
4. Lu, H. & Seabaugh, A. Tunnel field-effect transistors: state-of-the-art. IEEE J. Electron Devices Soc. 2, 44–49 (2014).10.1109/JEDS.2014.2326622 ↗
5. Ahn, D. H., Ji, S. M., Takenaka, M. & Takagi, S. Performance improvement of InxGa1−x As tunnel FETs with quantum well and EOT scaling. In Proc. Symposium on VLSI Technology, 224–225. https://doi.org/10.1109/VLSIT.2016.7573443 (IEEE, 2016).10.1109/VLSIT.2016.7573443 ↗
6. Memisevic, E., Svensson, J., Hellenbrand, M., Lind, E. & Wernersson, L. E. Vertical InAs/GaAsSb/GaSb tunneling field-effect transistor on Si with S = 48 mV/decade and I on = 10 µA/µm for I off = 1 nA/µm at V ds = 0.3 V. In Proc. IEEE International Devices Meeting (IEDM), 19.1.1–19.1.4. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEDM.2016.7838450 (IEEE, 2016).10.1109/IEDM.2016.7838450 ↗
7. Alian, A. et al. InGaAs tunnel FET with sub-nanometer EOT and sub-60 mV/dec sub-threshold swing at room temperature. Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 243502 (2016).10.1063/1.4971830 ↗
8. Takagi, S. et al. III-V and Ge/strained SOI tunneling FET technologies for low power LSIs. In Proc. Symposium on VLSI Technology, T22–T23. https://doi.org/10.1109/VLSIT.2015.7223687 (IEEE, 2015).10.1109/VLSIT.2015.7223687 ↗
9. Zhao, X., Vardi, A. & del Alamo, J. A. Sub-thermal subthreshold characteristics in top-down InGaAs/InAs heterojunction vertical nanowire tunnel FETs. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 38, 855–858 (2017).10.1109/LED.2017.2702612 ↗
10. Pala, M. G. & Esseni, D. Interface traps in InAs nanowire tunnel-FETs and MOSFETs−Part I: Model description and single trap analysis in tunnel-FETs. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 60, 2795–2801 (2013).10.1109/TED.2013.2274196 ↗
11. Agarwal, S. & Yablonovitch, E. Band-edge steepness obtained from Esaki/backward diode current-voltage characteristics. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 61, 1488–1493 (2014).10.1109/TED.2014.2312731 ↗
12. Fiori, G. et al. Electronics based on two-dimensional materials. Nat. Nanotechnol. 9, 768–779 (2014).10.1038/nnano.2014.207 ↗
13. Roy, T. et al. Dual-gated MoS2/WSe2 van der Waals tunnel diodes and transistors. ACS Nano 9, 2071–2079 (2015).10.1021/nn507278b ↗
14. Nourbakhsh, A., Zubair, A., Dresselhaus, M. S. & Palacios, T. Transport properties of a MoS2/WSe2 heterojunction transistor and its potential for application. Nano Lett. 16, 1359–1366 (2016).10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04791 ↗
15. Movva, H. C. P. et al. Room temperature gate-tunable negative differential resistance in MoS2/hBN/WSe2 heterostructures. In Proc. 2016 74th Annual Device Research Conference (DRC), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1109/DRC.2016.7548486 (IEEE, 2016).10.1109/DRC.2016.7548486 ↗
16. Roy, T. 2D-2D tunneling field-effect transistors using WSe2/SnSe2 heterostructures. Appl. Phys. Lett. 108, 08311 (2016).
17. Yan, R. et al. Esaki diodes in van der Waals heterojunctions with broken-gap energy band alignment. Nano Lett. 15, 5791–5798 (2015).10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01792 ↗
18. Shim, J. et al. Phosphorene/rhenium disulfide heterojunction-based negative differential resistance device for multi-valued logic. Nat. Commun. 7, 13413 (2016).10.1038/ncomms13413 ↗
19. Pang, C.-S., Ilatikhameneh, H. & Chen Z. Gate tunable 2D WSe2 Esaki diode by SiNx doping. In Proc. 2017 75th Annual Device Research Conference (DRC), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1109/DRC.2017.7999450 (IEEE, 2017).10.1109/DRC.2017.7999450 ↗
20. Liu, X. et al. Homogenous molybdenum disulfide tunnel diode formed via chemical doping. Appl. Phys. Lett. 112, 183103 (2018).10.1063/1.5023695 ↗
21. Paletti, P., Seabaugh, A., Yue, R., & Hinkle, C. Electric double layer Esaki tunnel junction in a 40-nm-length, WSe2 channel grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Al2O3. In Proc. 2018 48th European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC), 110–113. https://doi.org/10.1109/ESSDERC.2018.8486874 (IEEE, 2018).10.1109/ESSDERC.2018.8486874 ↗
22. Gao, J., Yu, G. & Heeger, A. J. Polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells with frozen p-i-n junction. Appl. Phys. Lett. 71, 1293–1295 (1997).10.1063/1.119875 ↗
23. Fathipour, S., Paletti, P., Fullerton-Shirey, S. & Seabaugh, A. Demonstration of electric double layer pin junction. In Proc. 2016 74th Annual Device Research Conference (DRC), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1109/DRC.2016.7548485 (IEEE, 2016).10.1109/DRC.2016.7548485 ↗
24. Xu, H., Fathipour, S., Kinder, E. W., Seabaugh, A. C. & Fullerton-Shirey, S. K. Reconfigurable ion gating of 2H-MoTe2 field-effect transistors using poly (ethylene oxide)-CsClO4 solid polymer electrolyte. ACS Nano 9, 4900–4910 (2015).10.1021/nn506521p ↗
25. Xu, K. et al. Reconfigurable pn junction formation and bandgap opening in bilayer graphene using polyethylene oxide and CsClO4 solid polymer electrolyte. In Proc. 2015 73rd Annual Device Research Conference (DRC) 173–174. https://doi.org/10.1109/DRC.2015.7175612 (IEEE, 2015).10.1109/DRC.2015.7175612 ↗
26. COMSOL Multiphysics® v. 5.3: Semiconductor module, General form PDE, https://www.comsol.com.
27. Kilic, M. S., Bazant, M. Z. & Ajdari, A. Steric effects in the dynamics of electrolytes at large applied voltages. II. Modified Poisson–Nernst–Planck equations. Phys. Rev. E 75, 021503 (2007).10.1103/PhysRevE.75.021503 ↗
28. Wang, H. & Pilon, L. Accurate simulations of electric double layer capacitance of ultramicroelectrodes. J. Phys. Chem. C 115, 16711–16719 (2011).10.1021/jp204498e ↗
29. Ueno, K. et al. Field-induced superconductivity in electric double layer transistors. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 83, 032001 (2014).10.7566/JPSJ.83.032001 ↗
30. Zhang, Y., Suzuki, R. & Iwasa, Y. Potential profile of stabilized field-induced lateral p–n junction in transition-metal-dichalcogenides. ACS Nano 11, 12583–12590 (2017).10.1021/acsnano.7b06752 ↗
31. Zhang, Y. J., Ye, J. T., Yomogida, Y., Takenobu, T. & Iwasa, Y. Formation of a stable p–n junction in a liquid-gated MoS2 ambipolar transistor. Nano Lett. 13, 3023–3028 (2013).10.1021/nl400902v ↗
32. Das, S. & Appenzeller, J. WSe2 field effect transistors with enhanced ambipolar characteristics. Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 103501 (2013).10.1063/1.4820408 ↗
33. Balestra, F., Benachir, M., Brini, J. & Ghibaudo, G. Analytical models of subthreshold swing and threshold voltage for thin- and ultra-thin-film SOI MOSFETs. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 37, 2303–2311 (1990).10.1109/16.62293 ↗
34. Ciarrocchi, A., Avsar, A., Ovchinnikov, D. & Kis, A. Thickness-modulated metal-to-semiconductor transformation in a transition metal dichalcogenide. Nat. Commun. 9, 919 (2018).10.1038/s41467-018-03436-0 ↗
35. Gutiérrez-Lezama, I., Reddy, B. A., Ubrig, N. & Morpurgo, A. F. Electroluminescence from indirect band gap semiconductor ReS2. 2D Mater. 3, 045016 (2016).10.1088/2053-1583/3/4/045016 ↗
36. Melzer, K. et al. Characterization and simulation of electrolyte-gated organic field-effect transistors. Faraday Discuss. 174, 399 (2014).10.1039/C4FD00095A ↗
37. Fathipour, S., Pandey, P., Fullerton-Shirey, S. & Seabaugh, A. Electric-double layer doping of WSe2 field-effect transistors using polyethylene-oxide cesium perchlorate. J. Appl. Phys. 120, 234902 (2016).10.1063/1.4971958 ↗
38. Walsh, L. A. & Hinkle, C. L. van der Waals epitaxy: 2D materials and topological insulators. Appl. Mater. Today 9, 504–515 (2017).10.1016/j.apmt.2017.09.010 ↗
39. Yue, R. et al. Nucleation and growth of WSe2: enabling large grain transition metal dichalcogenides. 2D Mater. 4, 045019 (2017).10.1088/2053-1583/aa8ab5 ↗
40. Walsh, L. A. et al. WTe2 thin films grown by beam-interrupted molecular beam epitaxy. 2D Mater. 4, 025044 (2017).10.1088/2053-1583/aa61e1 ↗