Air-stable van der Waals PtTe2 conductors with high current-carrying capacity and strong spin-orbit interaction

Seunguk Song; Inseon Oh; Sora Jang; Aram Yoon; Juwon Han; Zonghoon Lee; Jung-Woo Yoo; Soon-Yong Kwon

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105346

Air-stable van der Waals PtTe₂ conductors with high current-carrying capacity and strong spin-orbit interaction

iScience. 2022 Oct 13;25(11):105346. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105346. eCollection 2022 Nov 18.

Authors

Seunguk Song¹, Inseon Oh¹, Sora Jang¹, Aram Yoon^{1

2}, Juwon Han¹, Zonghoon Lee^{1

2}, Jung-Woo Yoo¹, Soon-Yong Kwon¹

Affiliations

¹ Departmet of Materials Science and Engineering & Center for Future Semiconductor Technology (FUST), Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan 44919, Republic of Korea.
² Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (CMCM), Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Ulsan 44919, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

High-performance van der Waals (vdW) integrated electronics and spintronics require reliable current-carrying capacity. However, it is challenging to achieve high current density and air-stable performance using vdW metals owing to the fast electrical breakdown triggered by defects or oxidation. Here, we report that spin-orbit interacted synthetic PtTe₂ layers exhibit significant electrical reliability and robustness in ambient air. The 4-nm-thick PtTe₂ synthesized at a low temperature (∼400°C) shows intrinsic metallic transport behavior and a weak antilocalization effect attributed to the strong spin-orbit scattering. Remarkably, PtTe₂ sustains a high current density approaching ≈31.5 MA cm^-2, which is the highest value among electrical interconnect candidates under oxygen exposure. Electrical failure is caused by the Joule heating of PtTe₂ rather than defect-induced electromigration, which was achievable by the native TeO_x passivation. The high-quality growth of PtTe₂ and the investigation of its transport behaviors lay out essential foundations for the development of emerging vdW spin-orbitronics.

Keywords: Condensed matter physics; Nanomaterials.