Influence of surface adsorption on MoS<inf>2</inf> memtransistor switching kinetics

Sulfur-deficient polycrystalline two-dimensional (2D) molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) memtransistors exhibit gate-tunable memristive switching to implement emerging memory operations and neuromorphic computing paradigms. Grain boundaries and sulfur vacancies are critical for memristive switching; however, the underlying physical mechanisms are not fully understood. Furthermore, the adsorption of water and gaseous species strongly perturbs electronic transport in monolayer MoS2, and little work has been done to explore the influence of surface interactions on defect-related kinetics that produces memristive switching. Here, we study the switching kinetics of back-gated MoS2 memtransistors using current transient measurements in a controlled atmosphere chamber. We observe that adsorbed water molecules lead to suppression of the electronic trap-filling processes concomitant with the resistive switching process, resulting in altered kinetics of the resistive switching. Additionally, using the transient response from “bunched” drain voltage pulse trains performed as a function of temperature, we extract the energy of the affected trap state and find that it places the trap roughly midgap [ E T = E C - 0.7 ( ± 0.4 ) eV]. Our results highlight the importance of controlling for surface interactions that may affect switching kinetics in 2D memtransistors, synaptic transistors, and related memory devices.