Efficient Suppression of Charge Recombination in Self-Powered Photodetectors with Band-Aligned Transferred van der Waals Metal Electrodes

Recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs dominates the photocarrier lifetime and then influences the performance of photodetectors and solar cells. In this work, we report the design and fabrication of band-aligned van der Waals-contacted photodetectors with atomically sharp and flat metal-semiconductor interfaces through transferred metal integration. A unity factor α is achieved, which is essentially independent of the wavelength of the light, from ultraviolet to near-infrared, indicating effective suppression of charge recombination by the device. The short-circuit current (0.16 μA) and open-circuit voltage (0.72 V) of the band-aligned van der Waals-contacted devices are at least 1 order of magnitude greater than those of band-aligned deposited devices and 2 orders of magnitude greater than those of non-band-aligned deposited devices. High responsivity, detectivity, and polarization sensitivity ratio of 283 mA/W, 6.89 × 10¹² cm Hz^1/2 W^-1, and 3.05, respectively, are also obtained for the device at zero bias. Moreover, the efficient suppression of charge recombination in our air-stable self-powered photodetectors also results in a fast response speed and leads to polarization-sensitive performance.

Doping-Free All PtSe2 Transistor via Thickness-Modulated Phase Transition

Achieving a high-quality metal contact on two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors still remains a major challenge due to the strong Fermi level pinning and the absence of an effective doping method. Here, we demonstrate high performance "all-PtSe₂" field-effect transistors (FETs) completely free from those issues, enabled by the vertical integration of a metallic thick PtSe₂ source/drain onto the semiconducting ultrathin PtSe₂ channel. Owing to its inherent thickness-dependent semiconductor-to-metal phase transition, the transferred metallic PtSe₂ transforms the underlying semiconducting PtSe₂ into metal at the junction. Therefore, a fully metallized source/drain and semiconducting channel could be realized within the same PtSe₂ platform. The ultrathin PtSe₂ FETs with PtSe₂ vdW contact exhibits excellent gate tunability, superior mobility, and high ON current accompanied by one order lower contact resistance compared to conventional Ti/Au contact FETs. Our work provides a new device paradigm with a low resistance PtSe₂ vdW contact which can overcome a fundamental bottleneck in 2D nanoelectronics.

Van der Waals Integrated Silicon/Graphene/AlGaN Based Vertical Heterostructured Hot Electron Light Emitting Diodes

Silicon-based light emitting diodes (LED) are indispensable elements for the rapidly growing field of silicon compatible photonic integration platforms. In the present study, graphene has been utilized as an interfacial layer to realize a unique illumination mechanism for the silicon-based LEDs. We designed a Si/thick dielectric layer/graphene/AlGaN heterostructured LED via the van der Waals integration method. In forward bias, the Si/thick dielectric (HfO₂-50 nm or SiO₂-90 nm) heterostructure accumulates numerous hot electrons at the interface. At sufficient operational voltages, the hot electrons from the interface of the Si/dielectric can cross the thick dielectric barrier via the electron-impact ionization mechanism, which results in the emission of more electrons that can be injected into graphene. The injected hot electrons in graphene can ignite the multiplication exciton effect, and the created electrons can transfer into p-type AlGaN and recombine with holes resulting a broadband yellow-color electroluminescence (EL) with a center peak at 580 nm. In comparison, the n-Si/thick dielectric/p-AlGaN LED without graphene result in a negligible blue color EL at 430 nm in forward bias. This work demonstrates the key role of graphene as a hot electron active layer that enables the intense EL from silicon-based compound semiconductor LEDs. Such a simple LED structure may find applications in silicon compatible electronics and optoelectronics.

Reconfigurable Diodes Based on Vertical WSe2 Transistors with van der Waals Bonded Contacts

New device concepts can increase the functionality of scaled electronic devices, with reconfigurable diodes allowing the design of more compact logic gates being one of the examples. In recent years, there has been significant interest in creating reconfigurable diodes based on ultrathin transition metal dichalcogenide crystals due to their unique combination of gate-tunable charge carriers, high mobility, and sizeable band gap. Thanks to their large surface areas, these devices are constructed under planar geometry and the device characteristics are controlled by electrostatic gating through rather complex two independent local gates or ionic-liquid gating. In this work, similar reconfigurable diode action is demonstrated in a WSe₂ transistor by only utilizing van der Waals bonded graphene and Co/h-BN contacts. Toward this, first the charge injection efficiencies into WSe₂ by graphene and Co/h-BN contacts are characterized. While Co/h-BN contact results in nearly Schottky-barrier-free charge injection, graphene/WSe₂ interface has an average barrier height of ≈80 meV. By taking the advantage of the electrostatic transparency of graphene and the different work-function values of graphene and Co/h-BN, vertical devices are constructed where different gate-tunable diode actions are demonstrated. This architecture reveals the opportunities for exploring new device concepts.

Physicochemical origin of high correlation between thermal stability of a protein and its packing efficiency: a theoretical study for staphylococcal nuclease mutants

There is an empirical rule that the thermal stability of a protein is related to the packing efficiency or core volume of the folded state and the protein tends to exhibit higher stability as the backbone and side chains are more closely packed. Previously, the wild type and its nine mutants of staphylococcal nuclease were compared by examining their folded structures. The results obtained were as follows: The stability was not correlated with the number of intramolecular hydrogen bonds, intramolecular electrostatic interaction energy, or degree of burial of the hydrophobic surface; though the empirical rule mentioned above held, it was not the proximate cause of higher stability; and the number of van der Waals contacts N vdW, or equivalently, the intramolecular van der Waals interaction energy was an important factor governing the stability. Here we revisit the wild type and its nine mutants of staphylococcal nuclease using our statistical-mechanical theory for hydration of a protein. A molecular model is employed for water. We show that the pivotal factor is the magnitude of the water-entropy gain upon folding. The gain originates from an increase in the total volume available to the translational displacement of water molecules coexisting with the protein in the system. The magnitude is highly correlated with the denaturation temperature T m. Moreover, the apparent correlation between N vdW and T m as well as the empirical rule is interpretable (i.e., their physicochemical meanings can be clarified) on the basis of the water-entropy effect.

Atomistic understanding of the C·T mismatched DNA base pair tautomerization via the DPT: QM and QTAIM computational approaches

It was established that the cytosine·thymine (C·T) mismatched DNA base pair with cis-oriented N1H glycosidic bonds has propeller-like structure (|N3C4C4N3| = 38.4°), which is stabilized by three specific intermolecular interactions-two antiparallel N4H…O4 (5.19 kcal mol(-1)) and N3H…N3 (6.33 kcal mol(-1)) H-bonds and a van der Waals (vdW) contact O2…O2 (0.32 kcal mol(-1)). The C·T base mispair is thermodynamically stable structure (ΔG(int) = -1.54 kcal mol(-1) ) and even slightly more stable than the A·T Watson-Crick DNA base pair (ΔG(int) = -1.43 kcal mol(-1)) at the room temperature. It was shown that the C·T ↔ C*·T* tautomerization via the double proton transfer (DPT) is assisted by the O2…O2 vdW contact along the entire range of the intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC). The positive value of the Grunenberg's compliance constants (31.186, 30.265, and 22.166 Å/mdyn for the C·T, C*·T*, and TS(C·T ↔ C*·T*), respectively) proves that the O2…O2 vdW contact is a stabilizing interaction. Based on the sweeps of the H-bond energies, it was found that the N4H…O4/O4H…N4, and N3H…N3 H-bonds in the C·T and C*·T* base pairs are anticooperative and weaken each other, whereas the middle N3H…N3 H-bond and the O2…O2 vdW contact are cooperative and mutually reinforce each other. It was found that the tautomerization of the C·T base mispair through the DPT is concerted and asynchronous reaction that proceeds via the TS(C·T ↔ C*·T*) stabilized by the loosened N4-H-O4 covalent bridge, N3H…N3 H-bond (9.67 kcal mol(-1) ) and O2…O2 vdW contact (0.41 kcal mol(-1) ). The nine key points, describing the evolution of the C·T ↔ C*·T* tautomerization via the DPT, were detected and completely investigated along the IRC. The C*·T* mispair was revealed to be the dynamically unstable structure with a lifetime 2.13·× 10(-13) s. In this case, as for the A·T Watson-Crick DNA base pair, activates the mechanism of the quantum protection of the C·T DNA base mispair from its spontaneous mutagenic tautomerization through the DPT.