Graphene Contacts to a HfSe2/SnS2 Heterostructure

TL;DR

This study explores how inserting an HfSe2 layer enhances the electronic coupling and contact quality between graphene and a SnS2 heterostructure, leading to improved charge transfer and low-resistance contacts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel heterostructure with HfSe2 as a matrix element matching layer, significantly improving coupling and contact resistance in graphene-based heterostructures.

Findings

HfSe2 increases coupling to graphene by a factor of 10.

The heterostructure maintains a negative Schottky barrier for electron injection.

The contact resistance is estimated to be very low, indicating excellent contact quality.

Abstract

Placing graphene on SnS2 results in significant charge transfer, on the order of 10^13/cm^2, from the graphene to the SnS2, and the charge transfer results in a negative Schottky barrier contact for electron injection from the graphene into the SnS2 conduction band. However, due to the s-px,y composition of the SnS2 conduction band, the coupling between the SnS2 and the graphene is relatively weak. A third layer, HfSe2, placed between the SnS2 and the graphene, serves as a matrix element matching layer, since it has strong coupling to both the graphene and the SnS2. It increases the coupling to the graphene by a factor of 10, and it has little effect on the negative Schottky barrier height, since the conduction band wavefucntion of the SnS2 / HfSe2 is a coherent superposition of the orbitals from the two individual layers, such that there is no energy barrier for an electron to move between the two layers. This paper first investigates the electronic properties of the heterostructure bilayer SnS2 / HfSe2 in the presence of an applied vertical electric field, and then it investigates the trilayer systems of BN / SnS2 / HfSe2 and graphene / SnS2 / HfSe2. A tunneling Hamiltonian estimate of the the contact resistance of the graphene to the SnS2 / HfSe2 heterostructure indicates an excellent low-resistance contact.