Gate-tunable cross-plane heat dissipation in single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides

Abstract

Efficient heat dissipation to the substrate is crucial for optimal device performance in nanoelectronics. We develop a theory of electronic thermal boundary conductance (TBC) mediated by remote phonon scattering for the single-layer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors MoS2 and WS2, and model their electronic TBC with different dielectric substrates (SiO2, HfO2, and Al2O3). Our results indicate that the electronic TBC is strongly dependent on the electron density, suggesting that it can be modulated by the gate electrode in field-effect transistors, and this effect is most pronounced with Al2O3. Our work paves the way for the design of novel thermal devices with gate-tunable cross-plane heat-dissipative properties.