Alexey Tarasov

Controlled Doping of Large‐Area Trilayer MoS2 with Molecular Reductants and Oxidants

Highly uniform large-area MoS2 is chemically doped using molecular reductants and oxidants. Electrical measurements, photoemission, and Raman spectroscopy are used to study the doping effect and to understand the underlying mechanism. Strong work-function changes of up to ±1 eV can be achieved, with contributions from state filling and surface dipoles. This results in high doping densities of up to ca. 8 × 10(12) cm(-2) .

Flexible MoS2 Field-Effect Transistors for Gate-Tunable Piezoresistive Strain Sensors

Atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a promising two-dimensional semiconductor for high-performance flexible electronics, sensors, transducers, and energy conversion. Here, piezoresistive strain sensing with flexible MoS2 field-effect transistors (FETs) made from highly uniform large-area films is demonstrated. The origin of the piezoresistivity in MoS2 is the strain-induced band gap change, which is confirmed by optical reflection spectroscopy. In addition, the sensitivity to strain can be tuned by more than 1 order of magnitude by adjusting the Fermi level via gate biasing.

A potentiometric biosensor for rapid on-site disease diagnostics

Quantitative point-of-care (POC) devices are the next generation for serological disease diagnosis. Whilst pathogen serology is typically performed by centralized laboratories using Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA), faster on-site diagnosis would infer improved disease management and treatment decisions. Using the model pathogen Bovine Herpes Virus-1 (BHV-1) this study employs an extended-gate field-effect transistor (FET) for direct potentiometric serological diagnosis. BHV-1 is a major viral pathogen of Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), the leading cause of economic loss (

Gold-coated graphene field-effect transistors for quantitative analysis of protein–antibody interactions

2 billion annually in the US only) to the cattle and dairy industry. To demonstrate the sensor capabilities as a diagnostic tool, BHV-1 viral protein gE was expressed and immobilized on the sensor surface to serve as a capture antigen for a BHV-1-specific antibody (anti-gE), produced in cattle in response to viral infection. The gE-coated immunosensor was shown to be highly sensitive and selective to anti-gE present in commercially available anti-BHV-1 antiserum and in real serum samples from cattle with results being in excellent agreement with Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and ELISA. The FET sensor is significantly faster than ELISA (<10 min), a crucial factor for successful disease intervention. This sensor technology is versatile, amenable to multiplexing, easily integrated to POC devices, and has the potential to impact a wide range of human and animal diseases.

Band structure effects on resonant tunneling in III-V quantum wells versus two-dimensional vertical heterostructures

Field-effect transistors (FETs) based on large-area graphene and other 2D materials can potentially be used as low-cost and flexible potentiometric biological sensors. However, there have been few attempts to use these devices for quantifying molecular interactions and to compare their performance to established sensor technology. Here, gold-coated graphene FETs are used to measure the binding affinity of a specific protein–antibody interaction. Having a gold surface gives access to well-known thiol chemistry for the self-assembly of linker molecules. The results are compared with potentiometric silicon-based extended-gate sensors and a surface plasmon resonance system. The estimated dissociation constants are in excellent agreement for all sensor types as long as the active surfaces are the same (gold). The role of the graphene transducer is to simply amplify surface potential changes caused by adsorption of molecules on the gold surface.

Graphene-Molybdenum Disulfide-Graphene Tunneling Junctions with Large-Area Synthesized Materials

Since the invention of the Esaki diode, resonant tunneling devices have been of interest for applications including multi-valued logic and communication systems. These devices are characterized by the presence of negative differential resistance in the current-voltage characteristic, resulting from lateral momentum conservation during the tunneling process. While a large amount of research has focused on III-V material systems, such as the GaAs/AlGaAs system, for resonant tunneling devices, poor device performance and device-to-device variability have limited widespread adoption. Recently, the symmetric field-effect transistor (symFET) was proposed as a resonant tunneling device incorporating symmetric 2-D materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), separated by an interlayer barrier, such as hexagonal boron-nitride. The achievable peak-to-valley ratio for TMD symFETs has been predicted to be higher than has been observed for III-V resonant tunneling devices. This work examines the effect ...

Piezoresistive strain sensing with flexible MoS 2 field-effect transistors

Tunneling devices based on vertical heterostructures of graphene and other 2D materials can overcome the low on-off ratios typically observed in planar graphene field-effect transistors. This study addresses the impact of processing conditions on two-dimensional materials in a fully integrated heterostructure device fabrication process. In this paper, graphene-molybdenum disulfide-graphene tunneling heterostructures were fabricated using only large-area synthesized materials, unlike previous studies that used small exfoliated flakes. The MoS2 tunneling barrier is either synthesized on a sacrificial substrate and transferred to the bottom-layer graphene or synthesized directly on CVD graphene. The presence of graphene was shown to have no impact on the quality of the grown MoS2. The thickness uniformity of MoS2 grown on graphene and SiO2 was found to be 1.8 ± 0.22 nm. XPS and Raman spectroscopy are used to show how the MoS2 synthesis process introduces defects into the graphene structure by incorporating sulfur into the graphene. The incorporation of sulfur was shown to be greatly reduced in the absence of molybdenum suggesting molybdenum acts as a catalyst for sulfur incorporation. Tunneling simulations based on the Bardeen transfer Hamiltonian were performed and compared to the experimental tunneling results. The simulations show the use of MoS2 as a tunneling barrier suppresses contributions to the tunneling current from the conduction band. This is a result of the observed reduction of electron conduction within the graphene sheets.

Dual-gated field-effect transistors made from wafer-scale synthetic few-layer molybdenum disulfide

We demonstrate piezoresistive strain sensors based on flexible MoS2 field-effect transistors made from a highly uniform large-area trilayer film. The origin of the piezoresistive effect in MoS2 is explained to be a strain-induced band gap change, as confirmed by optical spectroscopy. The results are in good agreement with recently reported simulations and spectroscopic studies on strained exfoliated MoS2. In addition, the strain sensitivity can be tuned by over one order of magnitude via modulating the MoS2 Fermi level with an applied gate voltage. The gate-tunable gauge factors can be as high as -40, comparable to polycrystalline silicon, but for a much thinner active layer (~2 nm). For practical sensing applications, the gate-tunable piezoresistivity is a useful property of transistor-based devices, because the relative sensitivity to strain can be adjusted by changing the gate voltage.

Highly Uniform Trilayer Molybdenum Disulfide for Wafer‐Scale Device Fabrication

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has recently received significant attention because of its interesting thickness-dependent properties and its potential as a semiconducting substitute to graphene [1,2]. Most of the studies so far have focused on small (<; 100 microns) exfoliated MoS2 flakes [1-3]. For manufacturable electronics, it is essential to have large-area material that is compatible with standard fabrication processes for high yield and reproducibility. Though significant progress has been achieved using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [4,5], the formation of high-quality wafer-scale MoS2 of controlled thickness is still a challenge.