Date of Award

12-1-2015

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Talapatra, Saikat

Abstract

In today's "silicon age" in which we live, field-effect transistors (FET) are the workhorse of virtually all modern-day electronic gadgets. Although silicon currently dominates most of these electronics, layered 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have great potential in low power optoelectronic applications due to their indirect-to-direct band gap transition from bulk to few-layer and high on/off switching ratios. TMDC WSe2 is studied here, mechanically exfoliated from CVT-grown bulk WSe2 crystals, to create a few-layered ambipolar FET, which transitions from dominant p-type behavior to n-type behavior dominating as temperature decreases. A high electron mobility μ>150 cm2V-1s-1 was found in the low temperature region near 50 K. Temperature-dependent photoconduction measurements were also taken, revealing that both the application of negative gate bias and decreasing the temperature resulted in an increase of the responsivity of the WSe2 sample. Besides TMDCs, Group III-VI van der Waals structures also show promising anisotropic optical, electronic, and mechanical properties. In particular, mechanically exfoliated few-layered InSe is studied here for its indirect band gap of 1.4 eV, which should offer a broad spectral response. It was found that the steady state photoconduction slightly decreased with the application of positive gate bias, likely due to the desorption of adsorbates on the surface of the sample. A room temperature responsivity near 5 AW-1 and external quantum efficiency of 207% was found for the InSe FET. Both TMDC’s and group III-VI chalcogenides continue to be studied for their remarkably diverse properties that depend on their thickness and composition for their applications as transistors, sensors, and composite materials in photovoltaics and optoelectronics.

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