Ruyue Yan

Improved Gate Dielectric Deposition and Enhanced Electrical Stability for Single-Layer MoS2 MOSFET with an AlN Interfacial Layer

Transistors based on MoS2 and other TMDs have been widely studied. The dangling-bond free surface of MoS2 has made the deposition of high-quality high-k dielectrics on MoS2 a challenge. The resulted transistors often suffer from the threshold voltage instability induced by the high density traps near MoS2/dielectric interface or inside the gate dielectric, which is detrimental for the practical applications of MoS2 metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). In this work, by using AlN deposited by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) as an interfacial layer, top-gate dielectrics as thin as 6 nm for single-layer MoS2 transistors are demonstrated. The AlN interfacial layer not only promotes the conformal deposition of high-quality Al2O3 on the dangling-bond free MoS2, but also greatly enhances the electrical stability of the MoS2 transistors. Very small hysteresis (ΔVth) is observed even at large gate biases and high temperatures. The transistor also exhibits a low level of flicker noise, which clearly originates from the Hooge mobility fluctuation instead of the carrier number fluctuation. The observed superior electrical stability of MoS2 transistor is attributed to the low border trap density of the AlN interfacial layer, as well as the small gate leakage and high dielectric strength of AlN/Al2O3 dielectric stack.

Enhanced Dielectric Deposition on Single-Layer MoS2 with Low Damage Using Remote N2 Plasma Treatment

Using remote N2 plasma treatment to promote dielectric deposition on the dangling-bond free MoS2 is explored for the first time. The N2 plasma induced damages are systematically studied by the defect-sensitive acoustic-phonon Raman of single-layer MoS2, with samples undergoing O2 plasma treatment as a comparison. O2 plasma treatment causes defects in MoS2 mainly by oxidizing MoS2 along the already defective sites (most likely the flake edges), which results in the layer oxidation of MoS2. In contrast, N2 plasma causes defects in MoS2 mainly by straining and mechanically distorting the MoS2 layers first. Owing to the relatively strong MoS2-substrate interaction and chemical inertness of MoS2 in N2 plasma, single-layer MoS2 shows great stability in N2 plasma and only stable point defects are introduced after long-duration N2 plasma exposure. Considering the enormous vulnerability of single-layer MoS2 in O2 plasma and the excellent stability of single-layer MoS2 in N2 plasma, the remote N2 plasma treatment shows great advantage as surface functionalization to promote dielectric deposition on single-layer MoS2.