Mobility engineering and metal-insulator transition in monolayer MoS2

TL;DR

This study investigates the electrical transport properties of monolayer MoS2 FETs, revealing how dielectric configurations influence mobility and demonstrating a metal-insulator transition, advancing understanding of 2D semiconductor physics.

Contribution

It provides new insights into charge impurity and phonon scattering mechanisms in MoS2 FETs and reports the observation of a metal-insulator transition in monolayer MoS2.

Findings

Mobility is strongly suppressed by charge impurities but improved with dual-gate dielectrics.

Phonon scattering shows weaker temperature dependence than expected.

A metal-insulator transition is observed in highly doped monolayer MoS2.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new class of materials with interesting physical properties and ranging from nanoelectronics to sensing and photonics. In addition to graphene, the most studied 2D material, monolayers of other layered materials such as semiconducting dichalcogenides MoS2 or WSe2 are gaining in importance as promising insulators and channel materials for field-effect transistors (FETs). The presence of a direct band gap in monolayer MoS2 due to quantum mechanical confinement, allows room-temperature field-effect transistors with an on/off ratio exceeding 108. The presence of high-k dielectrics in these devices enhanced their mobility, but the mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we report on electrical transport measurements on MoS2 FETs in different dielectric configurations. Mobility dependence on temperature shows clear evidence of the strong suppression of charge impurity scattering in dual-gate devices with a top-gate dielectric together with phonon scattering that shows a weaker than expected temperature dependence. High levels of doping achieved in dual-gate devices also allow the observation of a metal-insulator transition in monolayer MoS2. Our work opens up the way to further improvements in 2D semiconductor performance and introduces MoS2 as an interesting system for studying correlation effects in mesoscopic systems.