Photovoltaic effect in few-layer black phosphorus PN junctions defined by local electrostatic gating

Michele Buscema, Dirk J. Groenendijk, Gary A. Steele, Herre S.J. van der Zant and Andres Castellanos-Gomez ()
Additional contact information
Michele Buscema: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1
Dirk J. Groenendijk: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1
Gary A. Steele: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1
Herre S.J. van der Zant: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1
Andres Castellanos-Gomez: Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract In conventional photovoltaic solar cells, photogenerated carriers are extracted by the built-in electric field of a semiconductor PN junction, defined by ionic dopants. In atomically thin semiconductors, the doping level can be controlled by the field effect, enabling the implementation of electrically tunable PN junctions. However, most two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors do not show ambipolar transport, which is necessary to realize PN junctions. Few-layer black phosphorus (b-P) is a recently isolated 2D semiconductor with direct bandgap, high mobility, large current on/off ratios and ambipolar operation. Here we fabricate few-layer b-P field-effect transistors with split gates and hexagonal boron nitride dielectric. We demonstrate electrostatic control of the local charge carrier type and density in the device. Illuminating a gate-defined PN junction, we observe zero-bias photocurrents and significant open-circuit voltages due to the photovoltaic effect. The small bandgap of the material allows power generation for illumination wavelengths up to 940 nm, attractive for energy harvesting in the near-infrared.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5651 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5651

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5651

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().