We fabricate transistors from chemical vapor deposition-grown monolayer MoS2 crystals and demonstrate excellent current saturation at large drain voltages (Vd). The low-field characteristics of these devices indicate that the electron mobility is likely limited by scattering from charged impurities. The current-voltage characteristics exhibit variable range hopping at low Vd and evidence of velocity saturation at higher Vd. This work confirms the excellent potential of MoS2 as a possible channel-replacement material and highlights the role of multiple transport phenomena in governing its transistor action.

Rapid (nanosecond-scale) electrical pulsing is used to study drift-velocity saturation in graphene field-effect devices. In these experiments, high-field pulses are utilized to drive graphene's carriers on time scales much faster than that on which energy loss to the underlying substrate can occur, thereby allowing the observation of the highest saturation velocities reported to date. In a dramatic departure from the behavior exhibited by conventional metals and semiconductors, as the electron or hole density is reduced toward the charge-neutrality point, the drift velocity is found to reach values comparable to the Fermi velocity itself. Corresponding current densities are as large as 10(9) A/cm(2), similar to the values reported for carbon nanotubes and for graphene-on-diamond transistors. In essence, our approach of rapid pulsing allows us to "free" graphene from the deleterious influence of its substrate, revealing a pathway to achieve the superior electrical performance promised by this material. The usefulness of this approach is not merely limited to graphene but should extend also to a broad variety of two-dimensional semiconductors.

We demonstrate a novel form of thermally-assisted hysteresis in the transfer curves of monolayer MoS FETs, characterized by the appearance of a large gate-voltage window and distinct current levels that differ by a factor of ∼10. The hysteresis emerges for temperatures in excess of 400 K and, from studies in which the gate-voltage sweep parameters are varied, appears to be related to charge injection into the SiO gate dielectric. The thermally-assisted memory is strongly suppressed in equivalent measurements performed on bilayer transistors, suggesting that weak screening in the monolayer system plays a vital role in generating its strongly sensitive response to the charge-injection process. By exploiting the full features of the hysteretic transfer curves, programmable memory operation is demonstrated. The essential principles demonstrated here point the way to a new class of thermally assisted memories based on atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors.

We investigate energy relaxation of hot carriers in monolayer and bilayer graphene devices, demonstrating that the relaxation rate increases significantly as the Dirac point is approached from either the conduction or valence band. This counterintuitive behavior appears consistent with ideas of charge puddling under disorder, suggesting that it becomes very difficult to excite carriers out of these localized regions. These results therefore demonstrate how the peculiar properties of graphene extend also to the behavior of its nonequilibrium carriers.

We use pulsed electrical studies to investigate the various processes that limit the current carrying capacity of graphene high frequency transistors. By investigating the transient response of these devices over a time scale that spans some twelve orders of magnitude, we identify the presence of four distinct processes that degrade the current: (1) charge injection into deep traps within the interior of the oxide; (2) Joule heating of the transistor substrate by hot carriers in the graphene channel; (3) equilibration of interfacial-state filling in response to voltage transients, and; (4) leakage of captured charge from the deep traps, once the pulsed voltage is removed. The time scale associated with these processes ranges from nanoseconds to hours, with process (1) being the fastest and process (4) the slowest. By pulsing the transistors on time intervals as short as a few nanoseconds, we therefore demonstrate how it is possible to obtain output characteristics from them that are essentially free from the influence of these different mechanisms. Under such conditions, the hot-carrier drift velocity is shown to saturate at the large values expected for intrinsic graphene. Beyond graphene, this approach of pulsed characterization of transistor performance should be broadly applicable to studies of other twodimensional semiconductors, including transition-metal dichalcogenides, black phosphorous, silicene, and topological insulators.