Abstract
Layered materials of graphene and MoS2, for example, have recently emerged as an exciting material system for future electronics and optoelectronics. Vertical integration of layered materials can enable the design of novel electronic and photonic devices. Here, we report highly efficient photocurrent generation from vertical heterostructures of layered materials. We show that vertically stacked graphene–MoS2–graphene and graphene–MoS2–metal junctions can be created with a broad junction area for efficient photon harvesting. The weak electrostatic screening effect of graphene allows the integration of single or dual gates under and/or above the vertical heterostructure to tune the band slope and photocurrent generation. We demonstrate that the amplitude and polarity of the photocurrent in the gated vertical heterostructures can be readily modulated by the electric field of an external gate to achieve a maximum external quantum efficiency of 55% and internal quantum efficiency up to 85%. Our study establishes a method to control photocarrier generation, separation and transport processes using an external electric field.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge technical support from the Nanoelectronics Research Facility at UCLA. X.D. acknowledges partial support from a National Science Foundation CAREER award (DMR-0956171) and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (N00014-12-1-0745). W.J.Y. acknowledges partial support from a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; NRF-2011-351-c00034) and the Institute for Basic Science in Korea. Y.H. acknowledges support from the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award Program (1DP2OD007279). Z.L. is a visiting student from the Department of Physics, Peking University, sponsored by the UCLA cross-disciplinary scholars in science and technology (CSST) programme.
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X.D. conceived the research. X.D. and W.J.Y. designed the experiment. W.J.Y. performed most of the experiments, including device fabrication, characterization and data analysis. Y.L. helped W.J.Y. with photocurrent measurements. H.Z. synthesized the graphene samples. A.Y. performed the reflectance measurements. Z.L. performed the simulations. Y.H. and X.D. supervised the research. X.D. and W.J.Y. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Yu, W., Liu, Y., Zhou, H. et al. Highly efficient gate-tunable photocurrent generation in vertical heterostructures of layered materials. Nature Nanotech 8, 952–958 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.219
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.219
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