Doping-Free Arsenene Heterostructure Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors Enabled by Thickness Modulated Semiconductor to Metal Transition in Arsenene

Two-dimensional (2-D) materials such as MoS2 and phosphorene provide an ideal platform to realize extremely thin body metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) which is highly immune to short channel effects in the ultra-scaled regime. Even with the excellent electrostatic integrity inherent in 2-D system, however, 2-D materials suffer from the lack of efficient doping method which is crucial in MOSFETs technology. Recently, an unusual phase transition from semiconductor to metal driven by the thickness modulation has been predicted in mono-elemental 2-D material arsenene. Utilizing this extraordinary property, we propose doping-free arsenene heterostructure MOSFETs based on the lateral multilayer (metallic source)/monolayer (semiconducting channel)/multilayer (metallic drain) arsenene heterostructure. Metallic multilayer arsenene in the source and drain can serve as electrodes without doping. We investigate the potential performance of arsenene heterostructure MOSFETs through atomistic simulations using density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green’s function. The intrinsic upper limit of the on-state current in arsenene heterostructure MOSFETs is estimated by studying the effect of layer number in the source and drain. We comprehensively analyze the competitiveness of arsenene heterostructure MOSFETs through benchmarking with monolayer arsenene homostructure MOSFETs equipped with the highly degenerate doped source and drain, suggesting superior performance of heterostructure MOSFETs over homostructure MOSFETs.