Phase patterning for ohmic homojunction contact in MoTe 2

Making better contacts A key issue in fabricating transistors is making a good electrical contact to the semiconductor gate material. For two-dimensional materials, one route is through a phase transition that converts a hexagonally packed semiconductor phase into a distorted octahedrally packed metallic phase. Cho et al. show that laser heating of molybdenum telluride (MoTe 2 ) achieves this conversion through the creation of Te vacancies. The phase transition improves charge carrier mobility while maintaining the low resistance necessary for improved transistor function. Science , this issue p. 625