Scaling-up atomically thin coplanar semiconductor-metal circuitry via phase engineered chemical assembly

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable chemical assembly method to create high-performance, phase-engineered 2D MoTe2 transistors with seamless coplanar contacts, enabling flexible, optoelectronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale, controlled growth technique for heterophase 2H/1T' MoTe2 FETs with low-resistance contacts and demonstrates their application in flexible optoelectronics.

Findings

Achieved low-resistance ohmic contacts between 2H and 1T' MoTe2.

Demonstrated high mobility (~23 cm²/V·s) comparable to exfoliated crystals.

Realized flexible heterophase device arrays with near-infrared photoresponse.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) layered semiconductors, with their ultimate atomic thickness, have shown promise to scale down transistors for modern integrated circuitry. However, the electrical contacts that connect these materials with external bulky metals are usually unsatisfactory, which limits the transistor performance. Recently, contacting 2D semiconductors using coplanar 2D conductors has shown promise in reducing the problematic high resistance contacts. However, many of these methods are not ideal for scaled production. Here, we report on the large-scale, spatially controlled chemical assembly of the integrated 2H-MoTe2 field-effect transistors (FETs) with coplanar metallic 1T' MoTe2 contacts via phase engineered approaches. We demonstrate that the heterophase FETs exhibit ohmic contact behavior with low contact resistance, resulting from the coplanar seamless contact between 2H and 1T' MoTe2 confirmed by transmission electron microscopy characterizations. The average mobility of the heterophase FETs was measured to be as high as 23 cm2 V-1 s-1 (comparable with those of exfoliated single crystals), due to the large 2H MoTe2 single-crystalline domain (486{\mu}m). By developing a patterned growth method, we realize the 1T' MoTe2 gated heterophase FET array whose components of channel, gate, and contacts are all 2D materials. Finally, we transfer the heterophase device array onto a flexible substrate and demonstrate the near-infrared photoresponse with high photoresponsivity (~1.02 A/W). Our study provides a basis for the large-scale application of phase-engineered coplanar MoTe2 semiconductors-meter structure in advanced electronics and optoelectronics.