Oxide Thin-Film Electronics using All-MXene Electrical Contacts

Abstract

2D MXenes have shown great promise in electrochemical and electromagnetic shielding applications. However, their potential use in electronic devices is significantly less explored. The unique combination of metallic conductivity and hydrophilic surface suggests that MXenes can also be promising in electronics and sensing applications. Here, it is shown that metallic Ti₃C₂ MXene with work function of 4.60 eV can make good electrical contact with both zinc oxide (ZnO) and tin monoxide (SnO) semiconductors, with negligible band offsets. Consequently, both n-type ZnO and p-type SnO thin-film transistors (TFTs) have been fabricated entirely using large-area MXene (Ti₃C₂) electrical contacts, including gate, source, and drain. The n- and p-type TFTs show balanced performance, including field-effect mobilities of 2.61 and 2.01 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and switching ratios of 3.6 × 10⁶ and 1.1 × 10³, respectively. Further, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) inverters are demonstrated. The CMOS inverters show large voltage gain of 80 and excellent noise margin of 3.54 V, which is 70.8% of the ideal value. Moreover, the operation of CMOS inverters is shown to be very stable under a 100 Hz square waveform input. The current results suggest that MXene (Ti₃C₂) can play an important role as contact material in nanoelectronics.

MXene (Ti₃C₂) thin film is used for the first time as the electrical contacts (gate, source, and drain) for both n- and p-type thin-film transistors (TFT). The n- and p-type TFTs show reasonably good and balanced performance. A complementary metal oxide semiconductor device is further demonstrated, showing good static (high gain, excellent noise margin) and dynamic switching performance.

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