Temperature-Dependent Opacity of the Gate Field Inside MoS2 Field-Effect Transistors

The transport behaviors of MoS2 field-effect transistors (FETs) with various channel thicknesses are studied. In a 12 nm thick MoS2 FET, a typical switching behavior is observed with an I-on/I-off ratio of 10(6). However, in 70 nm thick MoS2 FETs, the gating effect weakens with a large off-current, resulting from the screening of the gate field by the carriers formed through the ionization of S vacancies at 300 K. Hence, when the latter is dual-gated, two independent conductions develop with different threshold voltage (VTH) and field-effect mobility (mu(FE)) values. When the temperature is lowered for the latter, both the ionization of S vacancies and the gate-field screening reduce, which revives the strong I-on/I-off ratio and merges the two separate channels into one. Thus, only one each of VTH and mu(FE) are seen from the thick MoS2 FET when the temperature is less than 80 K. The change of the number of conduction channels is attributed to the ionization of S vacancies, which leads to a temperature-dependent intra- and interlayer conductance and the attenuation of the electrostatic gate field. The defect-related transport behavior of thick MoS2 enables us to propose a new device structure that can be further developed to a vertical inverter inside a single MoS2 flake.