Chemical Trends of Deep Levels in Van Der Waals Semiconductors

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2020 Oct 24

PMID 33097722

Citations 4

Authors

Penghong Ci

Xuezeng Tian

Jun Kang

Anthony Salazar

Kazutaka Eriguchi

Sorren Warkander

Kechao Tang

Jiaman Liu

Yabin Chen

Sefaattin Tongay

Wladek Walukiewicz

Jianwei Miao

Oscar Dubon

Junqiao Wu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Properties of semiconductors are largely defined by crystal imperfections including native defects. Van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors, a newly emerged class of materials, are no exception: defects exist even in the purest materials and strongly affect their electrical, optical, magnetic, catalytic and sensing properties. However, unlike conventional semiconductors where energy levels of defects are well documented, they are experimentally unknown in even the best studied vdW semiconductors, impeding the understanding and utilization of these materials. Here, we directly evaluate deep levels and their chemical trends in the bandgap of MoS, WS and their alloys by transient spectroscopic study. One of the deep levels is found to follow the conduction band minimum of each host, attributed to the native sulfur vacancy. A switchable, DX center - like deep level has also been identified, whose energy lines up instead on a fixed level across different hosts, explaining a persistent photoconductivity above 400 K.

Citing Articles

Simultaneous achieving negative photoconductivity response and volatile resistive switching in CsCoCl single crystals towards artificial optoelectronic synapse.

Jiang H, Ji H, Ma Z, Yang D, Ma J, Zhang M Light Sci Appl. 2024; 13(1):316.

PMID: 39622801 PMC: 11612145. DOI: 10.1038/s41377-024-01642-8.

Characterizing Defects Inside Hexagonal Boron Nitride Using Random Telegraph Signals in van der Waals 2D Transistors.

Huang Z, Lee R, Cuniberto E, Song J, Lee J, Alharbi A ACS Nano. 2024; 18(42):28700-28711.

PMID: 39340839 PMC: 11503768. DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.4c06929.

Electrical spectroscopy of defect states and their hybridization in monolayer MoS.

Zhao Y, Tripathi M, cernevics K, Avsar A, Ji H, Gonzalez Marin J Nat Commun. 2023; 14(1):44.

PMID: 36596799 PMC: 9810731. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35651-1.

Breaking Rotational Symmetry in Supertwisted WS Spirals via Moiré Magnification of Intrinsic Heterostrain.

Ci P, Zhao Y, Sun M, Rho Y, Chen Y, Grigoropoulos C Nano Lett. 2022; 22(22):9027-9035.

PMID: 36346996 PMC: 9706673. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03347.

References

Wang G, Robert C, Suslu A, Chen B, Yang S, Alamdari S . Spin-orbit engineering in transition metal dichalcogenide alloy monolayers. Nat Commun. 2015; 6:10110. PMC: 4682039. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10110. View

Amit I, Octon T, Townsend N, Reale F, Wright C, Mattevi C . Role of Charge Traps in the Performance of Atomically Thin Transistors. Adv Mater. 2017; 29(19). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201605598. View

Grimme S . Semiempirical GGA-type density functional constructed with a long-range dispersion correction. J Comput Chem. 2006; 27(15):1787-99. DOI: 10.1002/jcc.20495. View

Vancso P, Magda G, Peto J, Noh J, Kim Y, Hwang C . The intrinsic defect structure of exfoliated MoS2 single layers revealed by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. Sci Rep. 2016; 6:29726. PMC: 4957227. DOI: 10.1038/srep29726. View

Chadi , Chang . Theory of the atomic and electronic structure of DX centers in GaAs and AlxGa1-xAs alloys. Phys Rev Lett. 1988; 61(7):873-876. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.61.873. View

Qiu H, Xu T, Wang Z, Ren W, Nan H, Ni Z . Hopping transport through defect-induced localized states in molybdenum disulphide. Nat Commun. 2013; 4:2642. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3642. View

Kresse , Furthmuller . Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set. Phys Rev B Condens Matter. 1996; 54(16):11169-11186. DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.54.11169. View

Dabov K, Foi A, Katkovnik V, Egiazarian K . Image denoising by sparse 3-D transform-domain collaborative filtering. IEEE Trans Image Process. 2007; 16(8):2080-95. DOI: 10.1109/tip.2007.901238. View

Blochl . Projector augmented-wave method. Phys Rev B Condens Matter. 1994; 50(24):17953-17979. DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.50.17953. View

10.

Radisavljevic B, Radenovic A, Brivio J, Giacometti V, Kis A . Single-layer MoS2 transistors. Nat Nanotechnol. 2011; 6(3):147-50. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2010.279. View

11.

Hong J, Hu Z, Probert M, Li K, Lv D, Yang X . Exploring atomic defects in molybdenum disulphide monolayers. Nat Commun. 2015; 6:6293. PMC: 4346634. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7293. View

12.

Amani M, Lien D, Kiriya D, Xiao J, Azcatl A, Noh J . Near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield in MoS₂. Science. 2015; 350(6264):1065-8. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2114. View

13.

Yin L, He P, Cheng R, Wang F, Wang F, Wang Z . Robust trap effect in transition metal dichalcogenides for advanced multifunctional devices. Nat Commun. 2019; 10(1):4133. PMC: 6742650. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12200-x. View

14.

Pandey M, Rasmussen F, Kuhar K, Olsen T, Jacobsen K, Thygesen K . Defect-Tolerant Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides. Nano Lett. 2016; 16(4):2234-9. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04513. View

15.

Lin , Dissanayake , Brown , Jiang . Relaxation of persistent photoconductivity in Al0.3Ga0.7As. Phys Rev B Condens Matter. 1990; 42(9):5855-5858. DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.42.5855. View

16.

Barja S, Refaely-Abramson S, Schuler B, Qiu D, Pulkin A, Wickenburg S . Identifying substitutional oxygen as a prolific point defect in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. Nat Commun. 2019; 10(1):3382. PMC: 6662818. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11342-2. View

17.

Cui X, Lee G, Kim Y, Arefe G, Huang P, Lee C . Multi-terminal transport measurements of MoS2 using a van der Waals heterostructure device platform. Nat Nanotechnol. 2015; 10(6):534-40. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2015.70. View

18.

Xie J, Zhang H, Li S, Wang R, Sun X, Zhou M . Defect-rich MoS2 ultrathin nanosheets with additional active edge sites for enhanced electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Adv Mater. 2013; 25(40):5807-13. DOI: 10.1002/adma.201302685. View

19.

Ci P, Chen Y, Kang J, Suzuki R, Choe H, Suh J . Quantifying van der Waals Interactions in Layered Transition Metal Dichalcogenides from Pressure-Enhanced Valence Band Splitting. Nano Lett. 2017; 17(8):4982-4988. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02159. View

20.

Liu Y, Guo J, Zhu E, Liao L, Lee S, Ding M . Approaching the Schottky-Mott limit in van der Waals metal-semiconductor junctions. Nature. 2018; 557(7707):696-700. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0129-8. View