Trilayer TMDC Heterostructures for MOSFETs and Nanobiosensors

TL;DR

This paper investigates trilayer TMDC heterostructures for advanced MOSFETs and nanobiosensors, demonstrating improved device performance and super-Nernst sensitivity for pH sensing through simulation studies.

Contribution

It introduces novel trilayer TMDC heterostructure FET designs with enhanced performance and sensing capabilities, including super-Nernst sensitivity in pH detection.

Findings

Inserting WS2 monolayer improves on current in MOSFETs.

Biaxial tensile strain reduces drain current due to effective mass lowering.

Bottom gate oxide scaling enhances pH sensor sensitivity.

Abstract

Two dimensional materials such as Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDC) and their bi-layer/tri-layer heterostructures have become the focus of intense research and investigation in recent years due to their promising applications in electronics and optoelectronics. In this work, we have explored device level performance of trilayer TMDC heterostructure (MoS2/MX2/MoS2; M=Mo or, W and X=S or, Se) Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) in the quantum ballistic regime. Our simulation shows that device 'on' current can be improved by inserting a WS2 monolayer between two MoS2 monolayers. Application of biaxial tensile strain reveals a reduction in drain current which can be attributed to the lowering of carrier effective mass with increased tensile strain. In addition, it is found that gate underlap geometry improves electrostatic device performance by improving sub-threshold swing. However, increase in channel resistance reduces drain current. Besides exploring the prospect of these materials in device performance, novel trilayer TMDC heterostructure double gate Field Effect Transistors (FETs) are proposed for sensing Nano biomolecules as well as for pH sensing. Bottom gate operation ensures these FETs operating beyond Nernst limit of 59 mV/pH. Simulation results found in this work reveal that scaling of bottom gate oxide results in better sensitivity while top oxide scaling exhibits an opposite trend. It is also found that, for identical operating conditions, proposed TMDC FET pH sensors show super-Nernst sensitivity indicating these materials as potential candidates in implementing such sensor. Besides pH sensing, all these materials show high sensitivity in the sub-threshold region as a channel material in nanobiosensor while MoS2/WS2/MoS2 FET shows the least sensitivity among them.