Ultranarrow Semiconductor WS₂ Nanoribbon Field-Effect Transistors

Semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted significant attention for their potential to develop high-performance, energy-efficient, and nanoscale electronic devices. Despite notable advancements in scaling down the gate and channel length of TMD field-effect transistors (FETs), the fabrication of sub-30 nm narrow channels and devices with atomic-scale edge control still poses challenges. Here, we demonstrate a crystallography-controlled nanostructuring technique to fabricate ultranarrow tungsten disulfide (WS₂) nanoribbons as small as sub-10 nm in width. The WS₂ nanoribbon junctions having different widths display diodic current-voltage characteristics, providing a way to create and tune nanoscale device properties by controlling the size of the structures. The transport properties of the nanoribbon FETs are primarily governed by narrow channel effects, where the mobility in the narrow channels is limited by edge scattering. Our findings on nanoribbon devices hold potential for developing future-generation nanometer-scale van der Waals semiconductor-based devices and circuits.