Toward high-current-density and high-frequency graphene resonant tunneling transistors
Negative differential resistance (NDR), a peculiar electrical property in which current decreases with increasing voltage, is highly desirable for multivalued logic gates, memory devices, and oscillators. Recently, 2D quantum-tunneling NDR devices have attracted considerable attention because of the inherent atomically flat and dangling-bond-free surfaces of 2D materials. However, the low current density of 2D NDR devices limits their operating frequency to less than 2 MHz. In this study, graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)/graphene resonant tunneling transistors (RTTs) were fabricated using graphene and h-BN barriers with different numbers of atomic layers, showing a mechanism enabling the observation of NDR in high current density devices. A triangular etching approach was proposed to suppress the effects of graphene-metal contact resistance and graphene sheet resistance, enabling pronounced NDR effect even in a 2D tunneling device with a single atomic layer h-BN barrier. A room-temperature peak current density up to 2700 μA/μm<sup>2</sup> and operational frequencies up to 11 GHz were achieved, demonstrating the potential of 2D quantum NDR devices for applications in high-speed electronics.
Authors
- Sefaattin Tongay (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8294-984X)
- Patrick Hays
- Aimin M. Song (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6550-518X)
- Jiawei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1624-9535)
- Mingyang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4731-6830)
- Yiming Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1368-9604)
- Yifei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6077-8525)
- Hu Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1050-8441)
- Baoqing Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4310-9586)
- Zihao Zhang
- Hecheng Han
Institutions
- Shandong University of Technology (CN)
- University of Manchester (GB)
- Southern University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Arizona State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-05-23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58720-7
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Graphene research and applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 4.14
Funders
- Department of Science and Technology of Shandong Province
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China
- Government of Jiangsu Province
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province
- Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province
- Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality
- Key Technology Research and Development Program of Shandong
- National Key Research and Development Program of China