The Positive Effects of Hydrophobic Fluoropolymers on the Electrical Properties of MoS2 Transistors

We report the improvement of the electrical performance of field effect transistors (FETs) fabricated on monolayer chemical vapor deposited (CVD) MoS2, by applying an interacting fluoropolymer capping layer (Teflon-AF). The electrical characterizations of more than 60 FETs, after applying Teflon-AF cap, show significant improvement of the device properties and reduced device to device variation. The improvement includes: 50% reduction of the average gate hysteresis, 30% reduction of the subthreshold swing and about an order of magnitude increase of the current on-off ratio. These favorable changes in device performance are attributed to the reduced exposure of MoS2 channels to the adsorbates in the ambient which can be explained by the polar nature of Teflon-AF cap. A positive shift in the threshold voltage of all the measured FETs is observed, which translates to the more desirable enhancement mode transistor characteristics.