Three-terminal ballistic junction based on phosphorene

Abstract

We investigate nonlinear electric response of a phosphorene-based three-terminal ballistic junction (TBJ) where two terminals (‘ l’ and ‘ r’) are armchair nanoribbons and the other (‘ m’) is a zigzag ribbon. The transmission among leads is found to be strongly anisotropic. When the push–pull voltage is applied on the terminal ‘ l’ and ‘ m’ (), the output voltage exhibits a remarkable change of slope () from one side of its extremum point to the other. The heat flux in the input terminals is much smaller than that for the conventional symmetric-input configuration with . As one armchair terminal is grounded, the output voltage from the other armchair terminal exhibits a typical voltage diode feature. The voltage transistor function is demonstrated, whose response parameters depend on the choice of output terminals. We also examine the phosphorene TBJ with two zigzag terminals and one armchair terminal, whose voltage response in all cases is similar to conventional TBJs due to a weak transmission anisotropy. The heat flux in the TBJ transistor depends on the edge type and width of leads. Its amplitude under the symmetric-input configuration exceeds twice of that under the asymmetric-input configuration. These results reveal unique advantages of phosphorene-based TBJ for nanoelectronic applications.