Artificial semiconductors with manufactured band structures have opened up many new applications in the field of optoelectronics. The emerging two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor materials, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), cover a large range of bandgaps and have shown potential in high performance device applications. Interestingly, the ultrathin body and anisotropic material properties of the layered TMDs allow a wide range modification of their band structures by electric field, which is obviously desirable for many nanoelectronic and nanophotonic applications. Here, we demonstrate a continuous bandgap tuning in bilayer MoS2 using a dual-gated field-effect transistor (FET) and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Density functional theory (DFT) is employed to calculate the field dependent band structures, attributing the widely tunable bandgap to an interlayer direct bandgap transition. This unique electric field controlled spontaneous bandgap modulation approaching the limit of semiconductor-to-metal transition can open up a new field of not yet existing applications.

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Band-to-band tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] have emerged as promising candidates to replace conventional metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) for lowpower integration circuits and have been demonstrated to overcome the thermionic limit, that results intrinsically in subthreshold swings of at least 60 mV/dec at room temperature 1,5,6 . Here we demonstrate TFETs based on few-layer black phosphorus, in which multiple top gates create electrostatic doping in the source and drain regions. By electrically tuning the doping types and levels in the source and drain regions, the device can be reconfigured to allow for TFET or MOSFET operation and can be tuned to be n-type or p-type. Full band atomistic quantum transport simulations of the fabricated devices agree quantitatively with the I-V measurements which gives credibility to the promising simulation results of ultra-scaled phosphorene TFETs 8,9 . Using atomistic simulations, we project substantial improvements in the performance of the fabricated TFETs when channel thicknesses and oxide thicknesses are scaled down.In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting materials have attracted attention as channel material for next-generation transistors [10][11][12][13][14][15] , as the ultra-thin body allows for ideal * Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.A.

2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted a lot of attention recently for energy-efficient tunneling-field-effect transistor (TFET) applications due to their excellent gate control resulting from their atomically thin dimensions. However, most TMDs have bandgaps (Eg) and effective masses (m*) outside the optimum range needed for high performance. It is shown here that the newly discovered 2D material, few-layer phosphorene, has several properties ideally suited for TFET applications: 1) direct Eg in the optimum range ~1.0–0.4 eV, 2) light transport m* (0.15 m0), 3) anisotropic m* which increases the density of states near the band edges, and 4) a high mobility. These properties combine to provide phosphorene TFET outstanding ION ~ 1 mA/um, ON/OFF ratio ~ 106 for a 15 nm channel and 0.5 V supply voltage, thereby significantly outperforming the best TMD-TFETs and CMOS in many aspects such as ON/OFF current ratio and energy-delay products. Furthermore, phosphorene TFETS can scale down to 6 nm channel length and 0.2 V supply voltage within acceptable range in deterioration of the performance metrics. Full-band atomistic quantum transport simulations establish phosphorene TFETs as serious candidates for energy-efficient and scalable replacements of MOSFETs.

As semiconductor devices scale to new dimensions, the materials and designs become more dependent on atomic details. NEMO5 is a nanoelectronics modeling package designed for comprehending the critical multi-scale, multi-physics phenomena through efficient computational approaches and quantitatively modeling new generations of nanoelectronic devices as well as predicting novel device architectures and phenomena. This article seeks to provide updates on the current status of the tool and new functionality, including advances in quantum transport simulations and with materials such as metals, topological insulators, and piezoelectrics.

Large-area two-dimensional (2D) heterojunctions are promising building blocks of 2D circuits. Understanding their intriguing electrostatics is pivotal but largely hindered by the lack of direct observations. Here graphene-WS heterojunctions are prepared over large areas using a seedless ambient-pressure chemical vapor deposition technique. Kelvin probe force microscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, and scanning tunneling microscopy characterize the doping in graphene-WS heterojunctions as-grown on sapphire and transferred to SiO with and without thermal annealing. Both p-n and n-n junctions are observed, and a flat-band condition (zero Schottky barrier height) is found for lightly n-doped WS, promising low-resistance ohmic contacts. This indicates a more favorable band alignment for graphene-WS than has been predicted, likely explaining the low barriers observed in transport experiments on similar heterojunctions. Electrostatic modeling demonstrates that the large depletion width of the graphene-WS junction reflects the electrostatics of the one-dimensional junction between two-dimensional materials.

In this article, a novel two-path model is proposed to quantitatively explain sub-threshold characteristics of back-gated Schottky barrier FETs (SB-FETs) from 2D channel materials. The model integrates the “conventional” model for SB-FETs with the phenomenon of contact gating – an effect that significantly affects the carrier injection from the source electrode in back-gated field effect transistors. The two-path model is validated by a careful comparison with experimental characteristics obtained from a large number of back-gated WSe2 devices with various channel thicknesses. Our findings are believed to be of critical importance for the quantitative analysis of many three-terminal devices with ultrathin body channels.

The dielectric engineered tunnel field-effect transistor (DE-TFET) as a high performance steep transistor is proposed. In this device, a combination of high-k and low-k dielectrics results in a high electric field at the tunnel junction. As a result a record ON-current of about 1000 uA/um and a subthreshold swing (SS) below 20mV/dec are predicted for WTe2 DE-TFET. The proposed TFET works based on a homojunction channel and electrically doped contacts both of which are immune to interface states, dopant fluctuations, and dopant states in the band gap which typically deteriorate the OFF-state performance and SS in conventional TFETs.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure