Date of Award

12-2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Peide Ye

Committee Chair

Peide Ye

Committee Member 1

Yong P. Chen

Committee Member 2

Mark S. Lundstrom

Committee Member 3

Xianfan Xu

Abstract

The current research on semiconductor device has pushed the scaling of the devices into sub-10 nanometers (nm) regime. While most of the current devices are made on silicon germanium, and III-V materials, people are looking for new materials for use in novel semiconductor devices: either for use in extremely scaled device in sub-10 or even sub-5 nm devices, or for use in other situations such as flexible electronics or low power and lower cost IoT (Internet of Things) applications.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted extensive research interests in their physical, chemical and mechanical properties.Since the discovery of graphene, which a single layer carbon atoms obtained by exfoliating from graphite by scotch tape, the research activities on 2D materials have increased exponentially during the past few years. The high mobility and ultra-thin body makes graphene interesting for electronics applications. However, the lack of a bandgap of graphene led to study of other 2D materials.Two of them have attracted a lot of interests recently, one is called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and the other is black phosphorus. Most of my research is based on these two materials, I tried to study from the synthesis of the materials, and then study the electronics applications of these materials.

In the first part of the thesis, an introduction of the background of the current research on 2D materials for electronics applications will be given. Also, the basic background of the materials I studied will be given.

In the second part of the paper, I will discuss about the electronic device applications of these materials. A detailed study on heterostructure device based on van der Waals interactions will be discussed, which is new concept devices based on the unique characteristics of 2D materials.

In the third part, the optoelectronic applications of the materials will be discussed. The effect of device structure will be discussed. The plasmonic structure is added to achieve better device performance, while simulations were performed to get a in-depth understanding.

In the fourth part, the stability of these materials will be discussed. Unlike the traditional semiconductor materials, which has already been studied for years to make them stable and reliable for semiconductor device applications, these novel nano materials are still suffering from some stability issues. In this chapter, a detailed study of the stability of these materials are described, some of the phenomenon are quite helpful for understanding the device characteristics, while some are useful for making these device more stable.

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