Electronic transport of encapsulated graphene and WSe2 devices fabricated by pick-up of prepatterned hBN

Nano Lett. 2015 Mar 11;15(3):1898-903. doi: 10.1021/nl504750f. Epub 2015 Feb 13.

Abstract

We report high quality graphene and WSe2 devices encapsulated between two hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) flakes using a pick-up method with etched hBN flakes. Picking up prepatterned hBN flakes to be used as a gate dielectric or mask for other 2D materials opens new possibilities for the design and fabrication of 2D heterostructures. In this Letter, we demonstrate this technique in two ways: first, a dual-gated graphene device that is encapsulated between an hBN substrate and prepatterned hBN strips. The conductance of the graphene device shows pronounced Fabry-Pérot oscillations as a function of carrier density, which implies strong quantum confinement and ballistic transport in the locally gated region. Second, we describe a WSe2 device encapsulated in hBN with the top hBN patterned as a mask for the channel of a Hall bar. Ionic liquid selectively tunes the carrier density of the contact region of the device, while the hBN mask allows independent tunability of the contact region for low contact resistance. Hall mobility larger than 600 cm(2)/(V·s) for few-layer p-type WSe2 at 220 K is measured, the highest mobility of a thin WSe2 device reported to date. The observations of ballistic transport in graphene and high mobility in WSe2 confirm pick-up of prepatterned hBN as a versatile technique to fabricate ultraclean devices with high quality contact.

Keywords: Pick-up technique; contact; graphene; mobility; transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs); two-dimensional (2D) heterostructures.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.