Internal Photoemission Spectroscopy of 2-D Materials

Recent research has shown the great benefits of using 2-D materials in the tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET), which is considered a promising candidate for the beyond-CMOS technology. The on-state current of TFET can be enhanced by engineering the band alignment of different 2D-2D or 2D-3D heterostructures. Here we present the internal photoemission spectroscopy (IPE) approach to determine the band alignments of various 2-D materials, in particular SnSe$_{2}$ and WSe$_{2}$, which have been proposed for new TFET designs. The metal-oxide-2-D semiconductor test structures are fabricated and characterized by IPE, where the band offsets from the 2-D semiconductor to the oxide conduction band minimum are determined by the threshold of the cube root of IPE yields as a function of photon energy. In particular, we find that SnSe$_{2}$ has a larger electron affinity than most semiconductors and can be combined with other semiconductors to form near broken-gap heterojunctions with low barrier heights which can produce a higher on-state current. The details of data analysis of IPE and the results from Raman spectroscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements will also be presented and discussed.