https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-026-01159-6
Research - Condensed Matter
Planar tunneling transistor based on 2D transition metal dichalcogenides heterostructures
1
Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, 100084, Beijing, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua University, 100084, Beijing, China
3
Department of Physics, Capital Normal University, 100048, Beijing, China
a
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Received:
6
December
2025
Accepted:
23
March
2026
Published online:
9
April
2026
Abstract
We investigated electron tunneling through planar heterostructures composed of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) modulated with an electrostatic potential induced via the gate voltage. Our results showed that resonant transmission spectra can be drastically altered by adjusting the gate voltage. When the electrostatic potential (
) counteracts the effect of the band offset (
) between two different adjacent 2D TMDC materials (so that the effective potential 
), the wave-vector mismatch at the interfaces is largely compensated in our coherent-transport model and the transmission can approach unity over a broad incident-energy range. When the gate voltage is changed to make the electrostatic potential approach the negative of the band offset, the conductance shows a trend from a relatively slow increase to a rapid decrease until it approaches zero, which indicates that the planar heterostructures exhibit pronounced gate-tunable switching characteristics in the coherent regime. As the length of the middle gate-voltage-modulated layer increases, the conductance exhibits beat-like oscillations originating from Fabry–Pérot interference. This study elucidates the operating mechanism of a planar tunneling transistor based on 2D semiconducting heterostructures and provides theoretical guidance for gate-controlled tunneling transport and device design.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2026
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
