Heavily-Doped SOI with SAM-Based Gate Dielectrics in Application to TMDC FETs
Authors: Ikoma Ryo , Kawanago Takamasa 
Published: February 2020

Semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) have been growing interest for both scientific interest and practical applications because of their various material properties. Potential applications and fundamental understanding in new classes of semiconductor materials motivates the fabrication of field-effect transistors (FETs) that are indispensable for probing of carrier transport properties, accumulation of charge and interfacial phenomena. This paper reports a fabrication and characterization of TMDC FETs with heavily-doped silicon-on-insulator substrate. The silicon processing is sophisticated technology that can be extended to the reliable operation of TMDC FETs with high reproducibility. In this presented approach, the heavily-doped SOI can work as a gate electrode in FETs, while the carrier injection into TMDC layer is possible by preparing overlap structure between gate electrode and source/drain contacts. The effectiveness of our approach was demonstrated through the fabrication and characterization of FETs.

P-type SOI(88 nm)/BOX(145 nm) wafer was cleaned with SPM and HF solutions. For heavily-doped n-type SOI (n+ SOI), phosphorus-doped spin-on-glass (SOG) was deposited with spin coating and baked on a hot plate at 180 oC. The substrate was annealed at 1000 oC in N2 for 30 min to perform solid phase diffusion. Then, SOG was removed by 1 % HF for 30min. For heavily-doped p-type SOI (p+ SOI), B+ ions were implanted into SOI layer. Activation was performed at 1000 oC in Ar for 30 min. SOI layer was patterned by chemical dry etching with CF4/O2. Thermal SiO2 was grown by dry oxidation at 900 oC for 10 min. Next, AlOx was deposited by RF sputtering. After contact opening with 1 % HF, Al (20 nm)/TiN (20 nm) were deposited by RF sputtering and lift-off for electrical contact to SOI. The substrates were subjected to annealing in forming gas at 420 oC for 30 min to improve the quality of gate dielectrics and electrical contact of gate pad. Al (10 nm)/Au (40nm) was deposited by thermal evaporation and lift-off for contact electrodes. Subsequently, the substrate was exposed to oxygen plasma to form hydroxyl groups on the surface of AlOx. Then, the substrate was immersed into 2-propanol containing 5 mM n-octadecylphosphonic acid (ODPA) for 6 hours at room temperature. Annealing was conducted at 100 oC in N2 for 30 min to stabilize ODPA. The gate dielectrics consists of hybrid ODPA/AlOx/SiO2. Mechanically exfoliated WS2 was transferred to the substrate with the PDMS elastomer. Finally, devices were annealed in N2 at 150 oC for 30 min to improve source/drain contact.

The FET operation was observed for both n+ and p+ SOI gate. The threshold voltage (Vth) was evaluated by linear extrapolation method with the drain current measured as a function of gate voltage at a low drain voltage of 0.05 V. In the case of n+ SOI gate electrode, the Vth of -0.71 V, On/Off ratio of 103～104 and subthreshold slope (SS) of 150 mV/dec were evaluated. On the other hand, the Vth of -0.13 V, On/Off ratio of 103～104 and subthreshold slope (SS) of 107 mV/dec were obtained for p+ SOI gate electrode. The difference in Vth between n+ and p+ SOI gate electrodes is derived from the difference in the Fermi level of SOI. The proposed method is suited for research in electrical characteristics of various TMDC semiconductors.