Two-Mode MoS₂ Filament Transistor with Extremely Low Subthreshold Swing and Record High On/Off Ratio

With rapid development of integrated circuits, urgent requirements for a transistor with lower subthreshold swing (SS) and better contact properties are needed. To optimize the SS and contact issues, we propose a concept of molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) filament transistor with two modes. We successfully fabricated the proposed devices in a wafer-scale. Mode I can enable the device with extremely low SS down to 2.26 mV/dec by switching the contact filament between on and off while mode II can realize a record high on/off ratio of 2.6 × 10⁹ by using filament as quasi-zero dimensional (quasi-0D) contact. Compared to conventional three-dimensional (3D) contact, quasi-0D contact using conductive filament improves the current density nearly 50 times. We also built a spice model to simulate the electrical behaviors, and the simulation results show an extremely low SS in mode I (using abrupt filament formation/rupture) and excellent quasi-0D contact in mode II. The two-mode MoS₂ filament transistor can significantly improve the SS and contact comparing to those of the state-of-the-art transistors, which has the great potential to boost the development of the next generation mainstream transistors.