Xia Hui, Luo Man, Wang Wenjing, Wang Hailu, Li Tianxin, Wang Zhen, Xu Hangyu, Chen Yue, Zhou Yong, Wang Fang, Xie Runzhang, Wang Peng, Hu Weida, Lu Wei
State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200083, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China.
Light Sci Appl. 2022 Jun 6;11(1):170. doi: 10.1038/s41377-022-00814-8.
In semiconductor manufacturing, PN junction is formed by introducing dopants to activate neighboring electron and hole conductance. To avoid structural distortion and failure, it generally requires the foreign dopants localize in the designated micro-areas. This, however, is challenging due to an inevitable interdiffusion process. Here we report a brand-new junction architecture, called "layer PN junction", that might break through such limit and help redefine the semiconductor device architecture. Different from all existing semiconductors, we find that a variety of van der Waals materials are doping themselves from n- to p-type conductance with an increasing/decreasing layer-number. It means the capability of constructing homogeneous PN junctions in monolayers' dimension/precision, with record high rectification-ratio (>10) and low cut-off current (<1 pA). More importantly, it spawns intriguing functionalities, like gate-switchable-rectification and noise-signal decoupled avalanching. Findings disclosed here might open up a path to develop novel nanodevice applications, where the geometrical size becomes the only critical factor in tuning charge-carrier distribution and thus functionality.
在半导体制造中，通过引入掺杂剂来激活相邻的电子和空穴电导从而形成PN结。为避免结构变形和失效，通常要求外来掺杂剂定位在指定的微区域。然而，由于不可避免的相互扩散过程，这具有挑战性。在此，我们报告一种全新的结结构，称为“层状PN结”，它可能突破此类限制并有助于重新定义半导体器件结构。与所有现有的半导体不同，我们发现多种范德华材料随着层数增加/减少，其自身从n型电导掺杂到p型电导。这意味着能够在单层尺寸/精度上构建均匀的PN结，具有创纪录的高整流比（>10）和低截止电流（<1 pA）。更重要的是，它产生了有趣的功能，如栅极可切换整流和噪声信号解耦雪崩。此处披露的发现可能为开发新型纳米器件应用开辟一条道路，其中几何尺寸成为调节电荷载流子分布从而调节功能的唯一关键因素。
