Anisotropic charged impurity-limited carrier mobility in monolayer phosphorene

TL;DR

This study models how charged impurities affect carrier mobility in monolayer phosphorene, revealing anisotropic behavior influenced by temperature, orientation, and encapsulation, with potential for mobility enhancement.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of impurity-limited mobility in phosphorene, highlighting anisotropic effects and the impact of encapsulation on mobility enhancement.

Findings

Mobility exhibits strong temperature dependence ($eta ightarrow T^{- ext{gamma}}$).

Mobility in armchair direction is about ten times higher than in zigzag.

Encapsulation with high-$ ext{k}$ materials significantly increases mobility.

Abstract

The room temperature carrier mobility in atomically thin 2D materials is usually far below the intrinsic limit imposed by phonon scattering as a result of scattering by remote charged impurities in its environment. We simulate the charged impurity-limited carrier mobility $\mu$ in bare and encapsulated monolayer phosphorene. We find a significant temperature dependence in the carrier mobilities ($\mu \propto T^{-\gamma}$) that results from the temperature variability of the charge screening and varies with the crystal orientation. The anisotropy in the effective mass leads to an anisotropic carrier mobility, with the mobility in the armchair direction about one order of magnitude larger than in the zigzag direction. In particular, this mobility anisotropy is enhanced at low temperatures and high carrier densities. Under encapsulation with a high-$\kappa$ overlayer, the mobility increases by up to an order of magnitude although its temperature dependence and its anisotropy are reduced.