ZrTe2 Compound Dirac Semimetal Contacts for High-Performance MoS2 Transistors

Recent investigations reveal elemental semimetal (Bi and Sb) contacts fabricated with conventional deposition processes exhibit a remarkable capacity of approaching the quantum limit in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor contacts, implying it might be an optimal option to solve the contact issue of 2D semiconductor electronics. Here, we demonstrate novel compound Dirac semimetal ZrTe2 contacts to MoS2 constructed by a nondestructive van der Waals (vdW) transfer process, exhibiting excellent ohmic contact characteristics with a negligible Schottky barrier. The band hybridization between ZrTe2 and MoS2 was verified. The bilayer MoS2 transistor with a 250 nm channel length on a 20 nm thick hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) exhibits an ION/IOFF current ratio over 105 and an on-state current of 259 μA μm–1. The current results reveal that 2D compound semimetals with vdW contacts can offer a diverse selection of proper semimetals with adjustable work functions for the next-generation 2D-based beyond-silicon electronics.