Highly Stable and Tunable Chemical Doping of Multilayer WS2 Field Effect Transistor: Reduction in Contact Resistance

The development of low resistance contacts to 2D transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is still a big challenge for the future generation field effect transistors (FETs) and optoelectronic devices. Here, we report a chemical doping technique to achieve low contact resistance by keeping the intrinsic properties of few layers WS2. The transfer length method has been used to investigate the effect of chemical doping on contact resistance. After doping, the contact resistance (Rc) of multilayer (ML) WS2 has been reduced to 0.9 kΩ·μm. The significant reduction of the Rc is mainly due to the high electron doping density, thus a reduction in Schottky barrier height, which limits the device performance. The threshold voltage of ML-WS2 FETs confirms a negative shift upon the chemical doping, as further confirmed from the positions of E12g and A1g peaks in Raman spectra. The n-doped samples possess a high drain current of 65 μA/μm, with an on/off ratio of 1.05 × 106 and a field effect mobility of 34.7 cm2/(V·s) at room temperature. Furthermore, the photoelectric properties of doped WS2 flakes were also measured under deep ultraviolet light. The potential of using LiF doping in contact engineering of TMDs opens new ways to improve the device performance.