Abstract
We present an extensive study of the electronic properties and carrier transport in phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) with edge defects by using rigorous atomistic quantum transport simulations. This study reports on the size- and defect-dependent scaling laws governing the transport gap, and the mean free path and carrier mobility in the PNRs of interest for future nanoelectronics applications. Our results indicate that PNRs with armchair edges (aPNRs) are more immune to defects than zig-zag PNRs (zPNRs), while both PNR types exhibit superior immunity to defects relative to graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). An investigation of the mean free path demonstrated that even in the case of a low defect density the transport in PNRs is diffusive, and the carrier mobility remains a meaningful transport parameter even in ultra-small PNRs. We found that the electron–hole mobility asymmetry (present in large-area phosphorene) is retained only in zPNRs for W > 4 nm, while in other cases the asymmetry is smoothed out by edge defect scattering. Furthermore, we showed that aPNRs outperform both zPNRs and GNRs in terms of carrier mobility, and that PNRs generally offer a superior mobility-bandgap trade-off, relative to GNRs and monolayer MoS2. This work identifies PNRs as a promising material for the extremely scaled transistor channels in future post-silicon electronic technology, and presents a persuasive argument for experimental work on nanostructured phosphorene.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Semiconductor Industry Association. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), 2013 ed. [Online]. http://www.itrs.net (accessed Jan 5, 2016).
Fiori, G.; Bonaccorso, F.; Iannaccone, G.; Palacios, T.; Neumaier, D.; Seabaugh, A.; Banerjee, S. K.; Colombo, L. Electronics based on two-dimensional materials. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2014, 9, 768–779.
Cao, W.; Kang, J. H.; Sarkar, D.; Liu, W.; Banerjee, K. 2D semiconductor FETs: Projections and design for sub-10 nm VLSI. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 2015, 62, 3459–3469.
Li, L. K.; Yu, Y. J.; Ye, G. J.; Ge, Q. Q.; Ou, X. D.; Wu, H.; Feng, D. L.; Chen, X. H.; Zhang, Y. B. Black phosphorus field-effect transistors. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2014, 9, 372–377.
Liu, H.; Neal, A. T.; Zhu, Z.; Luo, Z.; Xu, X. F.; Tománek, D.; Ye, P. D. Phosphorene: An unexplored 2D semiconductor with a high hole mobility. ACS Nano 2014, 8, 4033–4041.
Qiao, J. S.; Kong, X. H.; Hu, Z.-X.; Yang, F.; Ji, W. Highmobility transport anisotropy and linear dichroism in fewlayer black phosphorus. Nat. Commun. 2014, 5, 4475.
Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K.; Morozov, S. V.; Jiang, D.; Zhang, Y.; Dubonos, S. V.; Grigorieva, I. V.; Firsov, A. A. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science 2004, 306, 666–669.
Castro Neto, A. H.; Guinea, F.; Peres, N. M. R.; Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K. The electronic properties of graphene. Rev. Mod. Phys. 2009, 81, 109–162.
Baugher, B. W. H.; Churchill, H. O. H.; Yang, Y. F.; Jarillo-Herrero, P. Intrinsic electronic transport properties of highquality monolayer and bilayer MoS2. Nano Lett. 2013, 13, 4212–4216.
Pradhan, N. R.; Rhodes, D.; Zhang, Q.; Talapatra, S.; Terrones, M.; Ajayan, P. M.; Balicas, L. Intrinsic carrier mobility of multi-layered MoS2 field-effect transistors on SiO2. Appl. Phys. Lett. 2013, 102, 123105.
Das, S.; Zhang, W.; Demarteau, M.; Hoffmann, A.; Dubey, M.; Roelofs, A. Tunable transport gap in phosphorene. Nano Lett. 2014, 14, 5733–5739.
Han, M. Y.; Özyilmaz, B.; Zhang, Y. B.; Kim, P. Energy band-gap engineering of graphene nanoribbons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2007, 98, 206805.
Wang, X. R.; Ouyang, Y. J.; Li, X. L.; Wang, H. L.; Guo, J.; Dai, H. J. Room-temperature all-semiconducting sub-10-nm graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2008, 100, 206803.
Han, X. Y.; Morgan Stewart, H.; Shevlin, S. A.; Catlow, C. R. A.; Guo, Z. X. Strain and orientation modulated bandgaps and effective masses of phosphorene nanoribbons. Nano Lett. 2014, 14, 4607–4614.
Tran, V.; Yang, L. Scaling laws for the band gap and optical response of phosphorene nanoribbons. Phys. Rev. B 2014, 89, 245407.
Taghizadeh Sisakht, E.; Zare, M. H.; Fazileh, F. Scaling laws of band gaps of phosphorene nanoribbons: A tightbinding calculation. Phys. Rev. B 2015, 91, 085409.
Hu, W.; Yang, J. L. Defects in phosphorene. J. Phys. Chem. C 2015, 119, 20474–20480.
Ramasubramaniam, A.; Muniz, A. R. Ab initio studies of thermodynamic and electronic properties of phosphorene nanoribbons. Phys. Rev. B 2014, 90, 085424.
Guo, H. Y.; Lu, N.; Dai, J.; Wu, X. J.; Zeng, X. C. Phosphorene nanoribbons, phosphorus nanotubes, and van der Waals multilayers. J. Phys. Chem. C 2014, 118, 14051–14059.
Hu, W.; Lin, L.; Yang, C. Edge reconstruction in armchair phosphorene nanoribbons revealed by discontinuous Galerkin density functional theory. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2015, 17, 31397–31404.
Ezawa, M. Topological origin of quasi-flat edge band in phosphorene. New J. Phys. 2014, 16, 115004.
Pereira, V. M.; Lopes dos Santos, J. M. B.; Castro Neto, A. H. Modeling disorder in graphene. Phys. Rev. B 2008, 77, 115109.
Poljak, M.; Song, E. B.; Wang, M. S.; Suligoj, T.; Wang, K. L. Influence of edge defects, vacancies, and potential fluctuations on transport properties of extremely scaled graphene nanoribbons. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 2012, 59, 3231–3238.
Poljak, M.; Wang, K. L.; Suligoj, T. Variability of bandgap and carrier mobility caused by edge defects in ultra-narrow graphene nanoribbons. Solid-State Electron. 2015, 108, 67–74.
Djavid, N.; Khaliji, K.; Tabatabaei, S. M.; Pourfath, M. A computational study on the electronic transport properties of ultranarrow disordered zigzag graphene nanoribbons. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 2014, 61, 23–29.
Poljak, M.; Wang, M.; Song, E. B.; Suligoj, T.; Wang, K. L. Disorder-induced variability of transport properties of sub-5 nm-wide graphene nanoribbons. Solid-State Electron. 2013, 84, 103–111.
Yazdanpanah, A.; Pourfath, M.; Fathipour, M.; Kosina, H.; Selberherr, S. A numerical study of line-edge roughness scattering in graphene nanoribbons. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 2012, 59, 433–440.
Niquet, Y.-M.; Nguyen, V.-H.; Triozon, F.; Duchemin, I.; Nier, O.; Rideau, D. Quantum calculations of the carrier mobility: Methodology, Matthiessen’s rule, and comparison with semiclassical approaches. J. Appl. Phys. 2014, 115, 054512.
Lundstrom, M. Fundamentals of Carrier Transport; Cambridge University Press: New York, 2000.
Esseni, D.; Palestri, P.; Selmi, L. Nanoscale MOS Transistors: Semi-Classical Transport and Applications; Cambridge University Press: New York, 2011.
Fang, T.; Konar, A.; Xing, H. L.; Jena, D. Mobility in semiconducting graphene nanoribbons: Phonon, impurity, and edge roughness scattering. Phys. Rev. B 2008, 78, 205403.
Betti, A.; Fiori, G.; Iannaccone, G. Atomistic investigation of low-field mobility in graphene nanoribbons. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 2011, 58, 2824–2830.
Das, S.; Demarteau, M.; Roelofs, A. Ambipolar phosphorene field effect transistor. ACS Nano 2014, 8, 11730–11738.
Poljak, M.; Suligoj, T.; Wang, K. L. Influence of substrate type and quality on carrier mobility in graphene nanoribbons. J. Appl. Phys. 2013, 114, 053701.
Skotnicki, T.; Fenouillet-Beranger, C.; Gallon, C.; Boeuf, F.; Monfray, S.; Payet, F.; Pouydebasque, A.; Szczap, M.; Farcy, A.; Arnaud, F. et al. Innovative materials, devices, and CMOS technologies for low-power mobile multimedia. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 2008, 55, 96–130.
Uchida, K.; Watanabe, H.; Kinoshita, A.; Koga, J.; Numata, T.; Takagi, S. Experimental study on carrier transport mechanism in ultrathin-body SOI nand p-MOSFETs with SOI thickness less than 5 nm. In Technical Digest of International Electron Devices Meeting 2002 (IEDM 2002), San Francisco, CA,USA, 2002, pp 47–50.
Mak, K. F.; Lee, C.; Hone, J.; Shan, J.; Heinz, T. F. Atomically thin MoS2: A new direct-gap semiconductor. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2010, 105, 136805.
Radisavljevic, B.; Radenovic, A.; Brivio, J.; Giacometti, V.; Kis, A. Single-layer MoS2 transistors. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2011, 6, 147–150.
Datta, S. Nanoscale device modeling: The Green’s function method. Superlattices Microstruct. 2000, 28, 253–278.
Datta, S. Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor, 2nd ed.; Cambridge University Press: New York, 2005.
Rudenko, A. N.; Katsnelson, M. I. Quasiparticle band structure and tight-binding model for single- and bilayer black phosphorus. Phys. Rev. B 2014, 89, 201408.
Golizadeh-Mojarad, R.; Datta, S. Nonequilibrium Green’s function based models for dephasing in quantum transport. Phys. Rev. B 2007, 75, 081301.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Poljak, M., Suligoj, T. Immunity of electronic and transport properties of phosphorene nanoribbons to edge defects. Nano Res. 9, 1723–1734 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1066-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1066-1