Engineering the Palladium–WSe2 Interface Chemistry for Field Effect Transistors with High-Performance Hole Contacts

Palladium has been widely employed as a hole contact to WSe2 and has enabled, at times, the highest WSe2 transistor performance. However, there are orders of magnitude variation across the literature in Pd–WSe2 contact resistance and ION/IOFF ratios with no true understanding of how to consistently achieve high-performance contacts. In this work, WSe2 transistors with impressive ION/IOFF ratios of 106 and Pd–WSe2 Schottky diodes with near-zero variability are demonstrated utilizing Ohmic-like Pd contacts through deliberate control of the interface chemistry. The increased concentration of a PdSex intermetallic is correlated with an Ohmic band alignment and concomitant defect passivation, which further reduces the contact resistance, variability, and barrier height inhomogeneity. The lowest contact resistance occurs when a 60 min post-metallization anneal at 400 °C in forming gas (FG) is performed. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicates this FG anneal produces 3× the concentration of PdSex and an Ohmic...