February 3, 2011 — The École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) recently demonstrated that single-layer MoS2 can be used to fabricate transistors with extremely low leakage currents (25fA/um). Single-layer MoS2 is 0.65nm thick and is similar to graphene, except that it is a direct gap semiconductor, with a band gap of 1.8eV.
In addition to low leakage for 0.5V supply voltage, LANES’ transistors also show mobility comparable to 2nm thin silicon films and on/off ratio higher than 108. All this is measured at room temperature.
LANES researchers believe that single layer MoS2 could therefore complement graphene in applications that require a band gap, such as electronics.
LANES single-layer MoS2 was produced by scotch-tape peeling of naturally occuring molybdenite crystals.
The paper describing this research, written by B. Radisavljevic,A. Radenovic, J. Brivio, V. Giacometti & A. Kis, titled Single-layer MoS2 transistors, was published in Nature Nanotechnology at http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2010.279.html
Follow Small Times on Twitter.com by clicking www.twitter.com/smalltimes. Or join our Facebook group