Direct Integration of Monolayer WS₂ with Lithographically Patterned Carbon Contacts for Memristor Application

Lithographically patterned carbon microelectrodes, owing to their light weight, excellent thermal stability, chemical inertness, and good electrical conductivity, can be a suitable alternative to metal electrodes commonly employed as contact pads for electrical devices. In the present work, we demonstrate the fabrication of a planar memristor device consisting of monolayer WS2 integrated with photolithographically patterned glass-like carbon (GC) electrodes. The integration of GC with WS2 is carried out by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of WS2 on the GC electrodes obtained by carbonization of micropatterned phenol-formaldehyde resin (SU8) onto SiO2/Si substrates. The fabricated two-terminal memristor devices exhibit bipolar and asymmetric diode-like memristive characteristics, with a high-to-low resistance ratio of approximately 2 orders of magnitude and a high endurance of 400 cycles. The direct integration of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) with carbon materials in device geometry provides a platform for low-power device fabrication and enables the fabrication of microelectrodes of any desired shape.