Extending Channel Scaling Limit of p-MOSFETs Through Antimonene With Heavy Effective Mass and High Density of State

Conventional silicon-based transistor downscaling is approaching its physical limits, and thus additional novel solutions are urgently desired to address this issue. Herein, we show that 2-D antimonene with heavy effective mass and high density of state (DOS) via strain engineering presents reliable transistor performance with the channel length (
${L}_{\text {ch}}$
) shrinking below 5 nm. As the biaxial tensile strain increases to 7%, the band switching gives rise to a heavy hole effective mass of
$12.6{m}_{{0}}$
and a Van Hoff singularity-like DOS. This unique electronic structure can effectively suppress the tunneling current, resulting in steep subthreshold swings (SSs) and ideal ON-current (
${I}_{ \mathrm{ON}}$
). Especially, as
${L}_{\text {ch}}$
downscales to 2.2 nm, the OFF-current can be easily reduced to 0.1
$\mu \text{A}/\mu \text{m}$
with SS of 120 mV/dec (310 mV/dec for pristine antimonene) and
${I}_{ \mathrm{ON}}$
exceeds 900
$\mu \text{A}/\mu \text{m}$
, fulfilling the requirements for high-performance applications. Our results provide new insights on extending the scaling limit in energy-efficient gate-controlled devices.