In this work, a thin-film transistor gas sensor based on the p-N heterojunction is fabricated by stacking chemical vapor deposition-grown tungsten disulfide (WS2) with a sputtered indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) film. To the best of our knowledge, the present device has the best NO2 gas sensor response compared to all the gas sensors based on transition-metal dichalcogenide materials. The gas-sensing response is investigated under different NO2 concentrations, adopting heterojunction device mode and transistor mode. High sensing response is obtained of p-N diode in the range of 1-300 ppm with values of 230% for 5 ppm and 18 170% for 300 ppm. On the transistor mode, the gas-sensing response can be modulated by the gate bias, and the transistor shows an ultrahigh response after exposure to NO2, with sensitivity values of 6820% for 5 ppm and 499 400% for 300 ppm. Interestingly, the transistor has a typical ambipolar behavior under dry air, while the transistor becomes p-type as the amount of NO2 increases. The assembly of these results demonstrates that the WS2/IGZO device is a promising platform for the NO2-gas detection, and its gas-modulated transistor properties show a potential application in tunable engineering for two-dimensional material heterojunction-based transistor device.
Keywords: NO2; TFT; WS2/IGZO; ambipolar; gas sensing; p-N heterojunction.