Electrical characterization of fully encapsulated ultra thin black phosphorus-based heterostructures with graphene contacts

TL;DR

This paper reports the first fully encapsulated ultrathin black phosphorus transistors with graphene contacts, achieving stable, hysteresis-free operation and overcoming Schottky barrier limitations for potential electronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel heterostructure architecture with graphene contacts and boron nitride dielectric for stable black phosphorus devices.

Findings

Stable transport characteristics under various conditions

Contacts not dominated by thermionic emission

Overcomes Schottky barrier limitations

Abstract

The presence of finite bandgap and high mobility in semiconductor few-layer black phosphorus offers an attractive prospect for using this material in future two-dimensional electronic devices. Here we demonstrate for the first time fully encapsulated ultrathin (down to bilayer) black phosphorus field effect transistors in Van der Waals heterostructures to preclude their stability and degradation problems which have limited their potential for applications. Introducing monolayer graphene in our device architecture for one-atom-thick conformal source-drain electrodes enables a chemically inert boron nitride dielectric to tightly seal the black phosphorus surface. This architecture, generally applicable for other sensitive two-dimensional crystals, results in stable transport characteristics which are hysteresis free and identical both under high vacuum and ambient conditions. Remarkably, our graphene electrodes lead to contacts not dominated by thermionic emission, solving the issue of Schottky barrier limited transport in the technologically relevant two-terminal field effect transistor geometry.