High-Performance Molybdenum Disulfide Field-Effect Transistors with Spin Tunnel Contacts

Molybdenum disulfide has recently emerged as a promising two-dimensional semiconducting material for nanoelectronic, optoelectronic, and spintronic applications. Here, we investigate the field-effect transistor behavior of MoS₂ with ferromagnetic contacts to explore its potential for spintronics. In such devices, we elucidate that the presence of a large Schottky barrier resistance at the MoS₂/ferromagnet interface is a major obstacle for the electrical spin injection and detection. We circumvent this problem by a reduction in the Schottky barrier height with the introduction of a thin TiO₂ tunnel barrier between the ferromagnet and MoS₂. This results in an enhancement of the transistor on-state current by 2 orders of magnitude and an increment in the field-effect mobility by a factor of 6. Our magneto­resistance calculation reveals that such integration of ferromagnetic tunnel contacts opens up the possibilities for MoS₂-based spintronic devices