Enhanced Resonant Tunneling in Symmetric 2D Semiconductor Vertical Heterostructure Transistors

Tunneling transistors with negative differential resistance have widespread appeal for both digital and analog electronics. However, most attempts to demonstrate resonant tunneling devices, including graphene–insulator–graphene structures, have resulted in low peak-to-valley ratios, limiting their application. We theoretically demonstrate that vertical heterostructures consisting of two identical monolayer 2D transition-metal dichalcogenide semiconductor electrodes and a hexagonal boron nitride barrier result in a peak-to-valley ratio several orders of magnitude higher than the best that can be achieved using graphene electrodes. The peak-to-valley ratio is large even at coherence lengths on the order of a few nanometers, making these devices appealing for nanoscale electronics

Graphene-Molybdenum Disulfide-Graphene Tunneling Junctions with Large-Area Synthesized Materials

Tunneling devices based on vertical heterostructures of graphene and other 2D materials can overcome the low on–off ratios typically observed in planar graphene field-effect transistors. This study addresses the impact of processing conditions on two-dimensional materials in a fully integrated heterostructure device fabrication process. In this paper, graphene-molybdenum disulfide-graphene tunneling heterostructures were fabricated using only large-area synthesized materials, unlike previous studies that used small exfoliated flakes. The MoS₂ tunneling barrier is either synthesized on a sacrificial substrate and transferred to the bottom-layer graphene or synthesized directly on CVD graphene. The presence of graphene was shown to have no impact on the quality of the grown MoS₂. The thickness uniformity of MoS₂ grown on graphene and SiO₂ was found to be 1.8 ± 0.22 nm. XPS and Raman spectroscopy are used to show how the MoS₂ synthesis process introduces defects into the graphene structure by incorporating sulfur into the graphene. The incorporation of sulfur was shown to be greatly reduced in the absence of molybdenum suggesting molybdenum acts as a catalyst for sulfur incorporation. Tunneling simulations based on the Bardeen transfer Hamiltonian were performed and compared to the experimental tunneling results. The simulations show the use of MoS₂ as a tunneling barrier suppresses contributions to the tunneling current from the conduction band. This is a result of the observed reduction of electron conduction within the graphene sheets