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Ion-gated tungsten oxide based electrochemical transistors with subthreshold slopes approaching the thermodynamic limit

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Abstract

Electrochemical transistors (ECTs) are switches that are controlled by ionic gating, and find emerging applications in electronic devices and chemical sensors. In this paper, we fabricate microscale tungsten oxide (WOx) ECTs and study their subthreshold characteristics. We optimize the film deposition process to produce WOx films with various oxygen concentrations, and investigate their physical and chemical properties. We employ transparent amorphous WO3 films as the channel material for ECTs, and experimentally investigate their subthreshold behaviors by injecting different metal ions in electrolytes. In addition, we explore the dynamic response of the WO3 ECT. Gated by cation intercalation, we find that these WO3 ECTs can obtain a subthreshold slope as low as 60 mV/dec at room temperature, approaching the same thermodynamic limit as field-effect transistors. The material and device strategies provide a route to realizing future computing and sensing devices.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (Xing Sheng) upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work is supported by Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (20211080065), Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Z220015) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (52272277).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Institute for Precision Medicine, Center for Flexible Electronics Technology, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Kaiyuan Zhang, Wenxin Zhao & Xing Sheng

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  1. Kaiyuan Zhang
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  2. Wenxin Zhao
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  3. Xing Sheng
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Contributions

Conceptualization, KZ and XS; methodology, KZ, WZ and XS; writing—original draft preparation, KZ; writing—review and editing, XS; supervision, XS; project administration, XS; funding acquisition, XS. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xing Sheng.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

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Zhang, K., Zhao, W. & Sheng, X. Ion-gated tungsten oxide based electrochemical transistors with subthreshold slopes approaching the thermodynamic limit. Appl. Phys. A 129, 728 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-07005-1

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