Universal transfer of full-class metal electrodes for barrier-free two-dimensional semiconductor contacts

Abstract

Metal-semiconductor contacts are crucial components in semiconductor devices. Ultrathin two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenide semiconductors can sustain transistor scaling for next-generation integrated circuits. However, their performance is often degraded by conventional metal deposition, which results in a high barrier due to chemical disorder and Fermi-level pinning (FLP). Although, transferring electrodes can address these issues, they are limited in achieving universal transfer of full-class metals due to strong adhesion between pre-deposited metals and substrates. Here, we propose a nanobelt-assisted transfer strategy that can avoid the adhesion limitation and enables the universal transfer of over 20 different types of electrodes. Our contacts obey the Schottky-Mott rule and exhibit a FLP of S = 0.99. Both the electron and hole contacts show record-low Schottky barriers of 4.2 and 11.2 meV, respectively. As a demonstration, we construct a doping-free WSe₂ inverter with these high-performance contacts, which exhibits a static power consumption of only 58 pW. This strategy provides a universal method of electrode preparation for building high-performance post-Moore electronic devices.

Keywords

metal electrode transfer / metal-semiconductor contacts / Schottky barrier / two-dimensional semiconductors

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