Graphdiyne-metal contacts and graphdiyne transistors

TL;DR

This study investigates the interfacial properties of graphdiyne with various metals and demonstrates a high-performance graphdiyne FET with Al electrodes, revealing its potential for nanoscale electronic devices.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic DFT analysis of graphdiyne-metal contacts and simulates a high-performance graphdiyne FET, highlighting its application prospects.

Findings

Al, Ag, Cu form Ohmic contacts with graphdiyne.

Graphdiyne FET with Al shows high on-off ratio and large current.

Schottky barriers vary significantly with different metals.

Abstract

Graphdiyne is prepared on metal surface, and making devices out of it also inevitably involves contact with metals. Using density functional theory with dispersion correction, we systematically studied for the first time the interfacial properties of graphdiyne contacting with a series of metals (Al, Ag, Cu, Au, Ir, Pt, Ni, and Pd). Graphdiyne is in an n-type Ohmic or quasi-Ohmic contact with Al, Ag, and Cu, while it is in a Schottky contact with Au (at source/drain interface), Pd, Pt, Ni, and Ir (at source/drain-channel interface), with high Schottky barrier heights of 0.39, 0.21 (n-type), 0.30, 0.41, and 0.45 (p-type) eV, respectively. A graphdiyne field effect transistor (FET) with Al electrodes is simulated by using quantum transport calculations. This device exhibits an on-off ratio up to 104 and a very large on-state current of 1.3 * 104 mA/mm in a 10 nm channel length. Thus, a new prospect is opened up for graphdiyne in high performance nanoscale devices.