Percolative phase transition in few-layered MoSe₂ field-effect transistors using Co and Cr contacts

The metal-to-insulator phase transition (MIT) in two-dimensional (2D) materials under the influence of a gating electric field has revealed interesting electronic behavior and the need for a deeper fundamental understanding of electron transport processes, while attracting much interest in the development of next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices. Although the mechanism of the MIT in 2D semiconductors is a topic under debate in condensed matter physics, our work demonstrates the tunable percolative phase transition in few-layered MoSe₂ field-effect transistors (FETs) using different metallic contact materials. Here, we attempted to understand the MIT through temperature-dependent electronic transport measurements by tuning the carrier density in a MoSe₂ channel under the influence of an applied gate voltage. In particular, we have examined this phenomenon using the conventional chromium (Cr) and ferromagnetic cobalt (Co) as two metal contacts. For both Cr and Co, our devices demonstrated n-type behavior with a room-temperature field-effect mobility of 16 cm² V^-1 s^-1 for the device with Cr-contacts and 92 cm² V^-1 s^-1 for the device with Co-contacts, respectively. With low temperature measurements at 50 K, the mobilities increased significantly to 65 cm² V^-1 s^-1 for the device with Cr and 394 cm² V^-1 s^-1 for the device with Co-contacts. By fitting our experimental data to the percolative phase transition theory, the temperature-dependent conductivity data show a transition from an insulating-to-metallic behavior at a bias of ∼28 V for Cr-contacts and ∼20 V for Co-contacts. This cross-over of the conductivity can be attributed to an increase in carrier density as a function of the gate bias in temperature-dependent transfer characteristics. By extracting the critical exponents, we find that the transport behavior in the device with Co-contacts aligns closely with the 2D percolation theory. In contrast, the devices with Cr-contacts deviate significantly from the 2D limit at low temperatures.