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Updated: May 18, 2026

Electric-field Control of Electronic States in WS2 Nanodevices by Electrolyte Gating
Published on: April 12, 2018
Quantitative determination of the band gap of WS2 with ambipolar ionic liquid-gated transistors
Daniele Braga1, Ignacio Gutiérrez Lezama, Helmuth Berger
1DPMC and GAP, Université de Genéve, 24 quai Ernest Ansermet, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland. braga@ipe.mavt.ethz.ch
Abstract:
We realized ambipolar field-effect transistors by coupling exfoliated thin flakes of tungsten disulfide (WS(2)) with an ionic liquid dielectric. The devices show ideal electrical characteristics, including very steep subthreshold slopes for both electrons and holes and extremely low OFF-state currents. Thanks to these ideal characteristics, we determine with high precision the size of the band gap of WS(2) directly from the gate-voltage dependence of the source-drain current. Our results demonstrate how a careful use of ionic liquid dielectrics offers a powerful strategy to study quantitatively the electronic properties of nanoscale materials.
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