High-performance Te-doped p-type MoS2 transistor with high-K insulators

Abstract Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) films possess intrinsic n-type conductivity, and thus development of p-type MoS2 films for realizing practical next-generation complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices is extremely challenging. The use of dopants is a well-known conventional approach for engineering intrinsic conductivity with improved device performance. Herein, we demonstrate the n-type conductivity suppressing property of the tellurium (Te)-doped multilayer MoS2, grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The back-gated as-grown Te-doped multilayer MoS2 field-effect transistor (FET) is observed to exhibit p-type behavior with a maximum mobility of 0.036 cm2/V·s, ON/OFF current ratio of 7.8 × 103, and a Schottky barrier height of 32 meV. A quantitative Schottky barrier height of a p-type multilayer MoS2-based FET with Au electrode has been obtained by analyzing its low-temperature transport characteristics. Enhanced device performance has been achieved by doping the p-type MoS2 transistors in a back-gate structure and high-K dielectric gate insulators with Te. pFET devices containing Al2O3 dielectric insulators exhibit extremely high performance, including a maximum mobility of ∼182 cm2/V·s, maximum ON/OFF current ratio of ∼105, and a low subthreshold swing of ∼215 mV/dec. These improvements have been attributed to the charge screening effect associated with the high-K dielectrics and a low Schottky barrier height.