Electronic, Thermal, and (Some) Unusual Applications of 2D Materials

March 6, 2019

MTL Seminar Series

Eric Pop, Stanford University

Eric Pop is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering (EE) and Materials Science & Engineering (by courtesy) at Stanford, where he leads the SystemX Heterogeneous Integration focus area. He was previously on the faculty of UIUC (2007-13) and worked at Intel (2005-07). His research interests are at the intersection of electronics, nanomaterials, and energy. He received his PhD in EE from Stanford (2005) and three degrees from MIT (MEng and BS in EE, BS in Physics). His honors include the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), Young Investigator Awards from the Navy, Air Force, NSF and DARPA, and several best paper and best poster awards with his students. He is an Editor of the journal 2D Materials, has served as General Chair of the Device Research Conference, and on program committees of IEDM, VLSI, APS, and MRS. In his spare time he enjoys snowboarding and electronic music, and he was a DJ at Stanford’s KZSU 90.1 FM radio station from 2000-2004. Additional information about the Pop Lab is available online at http://poplab.stanford.edu.

This talk will present recent highlights from our research on two-dimensional (2D) materials including graphene, boron nitride (h-BN), and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). The results span from material growth and fundamental measurements, to simulations, devices and system-oriented applications that take advantage of unusual 2D material properties. We have grown monolayer 2D semiconductors over large areas, including MoS₂, WSe₂, and MoSe₂. We also uncovered that ZrSe₂ and HfSe₂ have native high-κ dielectrics ZrO₂ and HfO₂, which are of key technological relevance. Improved electrical contacts led to the realization of 10 nm monolayer MoS₂ transistors with the highest current reported to date, near ballistic limits. These could play a role in 3D heterogeneous integration of nanoelectronics, which presents significant advantages for energy-efficient computation. In less conventional applications, we utilized 2D materials as computing fabrics for analog dot product circuits, as thermal insulation for phase-change memory, and as the basis of thermal transistors. The latter could enable control of heat in “thermal circuits” analogous with electrical circuits. Combined, these studies reveal fundamental limits and some unusual applications of 2D materials, which take advantage of their unique properties.

Electronic, Thermal, and (Some) Unusual Applications of 2D Materials

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Abstract