Abstract
Atomically thin materials can be used to build novel forms of conventional semiconductor heterostructure devices. One such device is a resonant tunnelling diode, which can exhibit negative differential resistance and usually consists of a quantum-well structure between two barrier layers. Here, we show that a twisted black phosphorus homostructure can be used to create a resonant tunnelling diode. The devices have a trilayer structure in which a thin non-degenerate black phosphorus layer is sandwiched between two thicker degenerate black phosphorus layers. The interlayer coupling strength depends sensitively on the twist angle between the layers, and thus the twist angle can be used to control the vertical transport behaviour, from ohmic to tunnelling. Because resonant tunnelling through quantum-well states occurs without the need for a physical tunnelling barrier, our devices exhibit a higher tunnelling conductance and negative differential resistance peak-to-valley current ratio than resonant tunnelling diodes based on van der Waals heterostructures.
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Data availability
The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
Change history
09 July 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00621-w
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF; grants NRF-2016K1A1A2912707, 2016R1A6A3A11934734, 2016R1A2B4012931, 2018R1D1A1B07049669, 2019R1I1A1A01061466 and 2020R1A2C2014687), funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea, Samsung Research Funding Center of Samsung Electronics (project no. SRFC-TB1803-04) and the KISTI supercomputing centre (grant no. KSC-2018-CRE-0119).
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B.S., P.K.S. and C.L. conceived the project. Y.H. prepared the devices with help from Y.Z. for electron-beam lithography. P.K.S. and Y.H. carried out electrical measurements. D.J.P.d.S. and T.L. carried out quantum transport simulations. Y.G. and M.J. carried out DFT calculations for twisted and non-twisted BP bilayer band structures. F.A. and W.J.Y. helped with the glove box facility and its use. P.K.S., D.J.P.d.S., S.G., J.T.T., B.S., T.L. and C.L. discussed and analysed the data. P.K.S., C.L., B.S., D.J.P.d.S. and T.L. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Srivastava, P.K., Hassan, Y., de Sousa, D.J.P. et al. Resonant tunnelling diodes based on twisted black phosphorus homostructures. Nat Electron 4, 269–276 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00549-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00549-1
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