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Scaled crystalline antimony ohmic contacts for two-dimensional transistors

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 1191–1200 (2025)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 13 January 2026

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Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides are a potential alternative to silicon and could be used to create transistors with a contacted gate pitch below 40 nm as required by the ångström-node transistor technology. However, it remains challenging to maintain an ohmic contact when the contact length is reduced to less than 20 nm. Here we show that crystalline semi-metallic antimony contacts can be epitaxially grown on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) by molecular beam epitaxy, creating ohmic contacts with a resistance of 98 Ω µm at a contact length of 18 nm. We use the contacts to build scaled field-effect transistors with a contacted gate pitch of 40 nm with drive currents of 0.85 mA µm−1, 0.95 mA µm−1 and 1.08 mA µm−1 for monolayer, bilayer and trilayer MoS2 channels, respectively. Statistical analysis of transistor arrays confirms that the crystalline antimony contacts are reproducible and stable.

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Fig. 1: Scaling monolayer MoS2 transistors to 40-nm CGP.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of MBE crystalline Sb (\(01\bar{1}2\)).
Fig. 3: Lc scaling of MBE Sb (\({\rm{01}}\bar{{\rm{1}}}{\rm{2}}\))–MoS2 contact.
Fig. 4: Electrical performance of MoS2 FETs with 40-nm CGP.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant nos. 2022YFB4400100, 2023YFF1500500, 2022YFA1402500 and 2021YFA0715600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. T2221003, T2322014, U24A20295, 62304101, 62322408, 62341408, 62204113, 62204124, 62271245, 92164102, 92464303), the Leading-Edge Technology Program of Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation (grant nos. BK20232024, BK20232001), the Jiangsu Province Key R&D Program (grant no. BE2023009-3), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant nos. BK20230776, BK20220773, BG2024017), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. 0483014380001), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China, Xiaomi Foundation, Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Solid-State Lighting and Energy-Saving Electronics. We thank the Jiangnan Graphene Research Institute and the Sixth Element Semiconductor (Changzhou) Co. Ltd for assistance with characterization. We also express sincere gratitude to the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Future Intelligent Chips (Chip-X) funded by Yachen Foundation for invaluable support. X.W. acknowledges the support by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mingyi Du, Weisheng Li, Guangkai Xiong, Chunsong Zhao, Fuchen Hou.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Mingyi Du, Weisheng Li, Guangkai Xiong, Xilu Zou, Xuecou Tu, Yuan Gao, Hao Qiu, Yi Shi & Xinran Wang

  2. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Mingyi Du, Weisheng Li, Guangkai Xiong, Lei Liu, Xilu Zou, Taotao Li, Dongxu Fan, Yuan Gao, Hao Qiu, Yi Shi & Xinran Wang

  3. School of Integrated Circuits, Nanjing University, Suzhou, China

    Weisheng Li, Ningmu Zou, Taotao Li, Dongxu Fan & Xinran Wang

  4. Interdisciplinary Research Center for Future Intelligent Chips (Chip-X), Nanjing University, Suzhou, China

    Weisheng Li, Ningmu Zou, Taotao Li, Hao Qiu & Xinran Wang

  5. Suzhou Laboratory, Suzhou, China

    Weisheng Li, Lei Liu, Taotao Li, Haoliang Shen & Xinran Wang

  6. Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, Shenzhen, China

    Chunsong Zhao, Weizhuo Gan & Jeffrey Xu

  7. Department of Physics and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Advanced Quantum Functional Materials and Devices, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Fuchen Hou & Junhao Lin

  8. Quantum Science Center of Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (Guangdong), Shenzhen, China

    Fuchen Hou & Junhao Lin

  9. Key Laboratory of Quantum Materials and Devices of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Xiaoshu Gong, Liang Ma & Jinlan Wang

  10. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Wenjie Sun & Yuefeng Nie

  11. School of Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China

    Zhihao Yu

  12. School of Materials Science and Engineering and Center of 2D Materials, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Li Tao

  13. Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Jian-Bin Xu

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  1. Mingyi Du
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Contributions

X.W. conceived of and supervised the project. W.L. and X.W. conceived of the idea and designed the experiments. W.L., M.D. and G.X. contributed to transistor fabrication, measurements and data analysis with assistance from C.Z., Z.Y., D.F., H.Q., X.T., N.Z., H.S. and Y.G. F.H. and J.L. performed the transmission electron microscopy and data analysis. W.S. and Y.N. performed XRD and data analysis. X.G., L.M. and J.W. performed the DFT calculations. L.L., X.Z. and T.L. performed chemical-vapour-deposition growth of MoS2. C.Z., J.X., W.G., Y.S., L.T. and J.-B.X. contributed to discussions and data analysis. W.L., M.D. and X.W. co-wrote the paper with input from other authors. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to Weisheng Li or Xinran Wang.

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Du, M., Li, W., Xiong, G. et al. Scaled crystalline antimony ohmic contacts for two-dimensional transistors. Nat Electron 8, 1191–1200 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01500-4

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