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Reconfigurable photo-induced doping of two-dimensional van der Waals semiconductors using different photon energies

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 38–44 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two-dimensional semiconductors have a range of electronic and optical properties that can be used in the development of advanced electronic devices. However, unlike conventional silicon semiconductors, simple doping methods to monolithically assemble n- and p-type channels on a single two-dimensional semiconductor are lacking, which makes the fabrication of integrated circuitry challenging. Here we report the reversible photo-induced doping of few-layer molybdenum ditelluride and tungsten diselenide, where the channel polarity can be reconfigured from n-type to p-type, and vice versa, with laser light at different frequencies. This reconfigurable doping is attributed to selective light–lattice interactions, such as the formation of tellurium self-interstitial defects under ultraviolet illumination and the incorporation of substitutional oxygen in tellurium and molybdenum vacancies under visible illumination. Using this approach, we create a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) device on a single channel, where the circuit functions can be dynamically reset from a CMOS inverter to a CMOS switch using pulses of different light frequencies.

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Fig. 1: Reconfigurable doping on few-layer 2H-MoTe2 channels using different photon energies.
Fig. 2: Time stability of reconfigurable doping on 2H-MoTe2 and reconfigurable doping on few-layer 2H-WSe2 channels.
Fig. 3: Doping polarity versus light frequency and intensity.
Fig. 4: Atomic-scale observations of individual dopants.
Fig. 5: Reconfigurable CMOS inverter–switch tuned at different light frequencies.

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The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Korea, under project code IBS-R014-A1.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Seung-Young Seo, Gunho Moon.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic Systems, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Pohang, Korea

    Seung-Young Seo, Gunho Moon, Min Yeong Park, Cheolhee Han, Soonyoung Cha, Han Woong Yeom, Jewook Park & Moon-Ho Jo

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea

    Seung-Young Seo, Gunho Moon, Odongo F. N. Okello, Min Yeong Park, Cheolhee Han, Si-Young Choi & Moon-Ho Jo

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Hyunyong Choi

  4. Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea

    Han Woong Yeom & Moon-Ho Jo

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Contributions

S.-Y.S., G.M. and M.-H.J. conceived and designed the project. S.-Y.S., G.M., C.H., S.C. and H.C. conducted the device fabrication, photo-induced doping and electrical measurements. O.F.N.O. and S.-Y.C. performed the TEM measurements and analysed the data. J.P. and H.W.Y. performed the STM measurements and analysed the data. M.Y.P. performed the metal–organic chemical vapour deposition growth of the WSe2 channels. S.-Y.S., G.M. and M.-H.J. wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Moon-Ho Jo.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–15.

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Seo, SY., Moon, G., Okello, O.F.N. et al. Reconfigurable photo-induced doping of two-dimensional van der Waals semiconductors using different photon energies. Nat Electron 4, 38–44 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00512-6

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