Steep-slope Schottky diode with cold metal source

Today's circuit technology requires low-power transistors and diodes to extend Moore's law. While research has been focused on reducing power consumption of transistors, low-power diodes have not been widely studied. Here, we report a low-power, thus steep-slope Schottky diode, with a “cold metal” source. The Schottky barrier between metal electrode and bulk MoS2 enabled the diode behavior, and the steep-slope diode IV curve originated from the change in the density of states of a graphite (cold metal) source with a bias voltage. The MoS2 Schottky diode with a cold metal exhibits an ideality factor (η) < 1 for more than four decades of drain current with a sizable rectifying ratio (108). The realization of a steep-slope Schottky diode paves the way to the improvement in low-power circuit technology.