First-principles study of anisotropic planar 2D BC2N for sub-5 nm high-performance p-type transistors

Nanoscale. 2025 Jan 20. doi: 10.1039/d4nr04600e. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are considered the potential channel for next-generation transistors. Unfortunately, the development of p-type 2D material transistors lags significantly behind that of n-type, thereby impeding the advancement of complementary logical circuits. In this study, we investigated the electronic properties of 2D BC2N and analyzed the transport performance of p-type 2D BC2N-6 FETs through first-principles calculations. The anisotropic electronic properties of BC2N-6 led to variations in device transport performance along the zigzag and armchair directions. The on-state current of 10 nm BC2N-6 FETs could reach 2415 μA μm-1 and 1660 μA μm-1 along the zigzag and armchair directions, respectively. Subthreshold swing (SS) values for both directions were 63 mV dec-1, nearing the limit of 60 mV dec-1. Even when the gate length was scaled down to 5 nm, the on-state current of BC2N-6 FETs in both directions exceeded 1500 μA μm-1, which was approximately 160% of International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) standards for high-performance (HP) devices. Furthermore, the delay time (τ) and power dissipation (PDP) of BC2N-6 FETs could fully satisfy ITRS requirements. Our work demonstrates that monolayer BC2N-6 can serve as a competitive p-type channel for next-generation devices.