Semiconductor p-n junctions are essential building blocks for electronic and optoelectronic devices. In conventional p-n junctions, regions depleted of free charge carriers form on either side of the junction, generating built-in potentials associated with uncompensated dopant atoms. Carrier transport across the junction occurs by diffusion and drift processes influenced by the spatial extent of this depletion region. With the advent of atomically thin van der Waals materials and their heterostructures, it is now possible to realize a p-n junction at the ultimate thickness limit. Van der Waals junctions composed of p- and n-type semiconductors--each just one unit cell thick--are predicted to exhibit completely different charge transport characteristics than bulk heterojunctions. Here, we report the characterization of the electronic and optoelectronic properties of atomically thin p-n heterojunctions fabricated using van der Waals assembly of transition-metal dichalcogenides. We observe gate-tunable diode-like current rectification and a photovoltaic response across the p-n interface. We find that the tunnelling-assisted interlayer recombination of the majority carriers is responsible for the tunability of the electronic and optoelectronic processes. Sandwiching an atomic p-n junction between graphene layers enhances the collection of the photoexcited carriers. The atomically scaled van der Waals p-n heterostructures presented here constitute the ultimate functional unit for nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices.

However, the conductance variation from junction to junction has made it difficult to verify even the simplest predictions about how molecules should behave in unimolecular devices. Here, using amine link groups 13 to form single molecule junctions, we show a clear correlation between molecule conformation and junction conductance in a series of seven biphenyl molecules with different ring substitutions that alter the twist angle of the molecules. We find that the conductance for the series decreases with increasing twist angle, consistent with a cosine squared relation predicted theoretically for transport through π-conjugated systems 14 .We recently demonstrated that metal-molecule-metal junctions, formed by breaking Au point contacts in a solution of molecules, exhibit more reliable and reproducible conductance values when amine groups rather than thiols or isonitriles are used to attach the molecules to the junction contacts 13 . Because of this reduced variability, we can 2 determine statistically meaningful average conductance values for specific singlemolecule junctions; this capability in turn allows us to study the impact of molecular properties on junction conductance.We present our experimental results as conductance histograms, where peaks indicate the most prevalent molecular junction conductances while the width of the conductance distributions reflects the microscopic variations from junction to junction.(For details on experimental and data analysis procedures, see SupplementaryInformation.) Figure 1A shows the histograms for 1,4-diaminobenzene (1) and 2,7-diaminofluorene (2), each constructed from over 10000 conductance traces without resorting to any data selection or processing. Many of our conductance traces reveal stepwise changes in conductance not only at conductance values that are multiples of the fundamental quantum of conductance G 0 (2e 2 /h), but also below G 0 (see Fig. 1C and Supplementary Information Figure S1). These steps are due to conduction through a single molecule bridging the gap between the two Au point-contacts. As seen in the histograms of 1 and 2 (Fig. 1A), for each junction type the additional step occurs within a narrow distribution of conductance values. The most prevalent value is determined by a fit to the peak below G 0 in the conductance histograms using a Lorentzian line shape, which we find to fit our peaks more accurately than a Gaussian line shape (see inset of Figure 1A and also Supplementary Information).When the experiment is repeated using a solution containing an equimolar mixture of 1 and 2 (as indicated in Figure 1B), the resulting histogram (red curve in Figure 1A) shows two distinct peaks below G 0 at nearly the same conductance values as those of the peaks seen in the histograms for the individual molecules (green and yellow curves).Individual traces using the solution mixture show conductance plateaus corresponding to either molecule 1 or 2, and sometimes a plateau corresponding to 1 followed by a plateau 3 corresponding to 2 (see Figure 1C). But ...

Abstract:We measure the conductance of amine terminated molecules by breaking Au pointcontacts in a molecular solution at room temperature. We find that the variability of the observed conductance for the diamine molecule-Au junctions is much less than the variability for diisonitrile and dithiol-Au junctions. This narrow distribution enables unambiguous conductance measurements of single molecules. For an alkane diamine series with 2-8 carbon atoms in the hydrocarbon chain our results show a systematic trend in the conductance from which we extract a tunneling decay constant of 0.91 ± 0.03 per methylene group. We hypothesize that the diamine link binds preferentially to under-coordinated Au atoms in the junction. This is supported by density functional theory based calculations that show the amine binding to a gold adatom with sufficient angular flexibility for easy junction formation but well-defined electronic coupling of

Atomically thin forms of layered materials, such as conducting graphene, insulating hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), and semiconducting molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), have generated great interests recently due to the possibility of combining diverse atomic layers by mechanical "stacking" to create novel materials and devices. In this work, we demonstrate field-effect transistors (FETs) with MoS2 channels, hBN dielectric, and graphene gate electrodes. These devices show field-effect mobilities of up to 45 cm(2)/Vs and operating gate voltage below 10 V, with greatly reduced hysteresis. Taking advantage of the mechanical strength and flexibility of these materials, we demonstrate integration onto a polymer substrate to create flexible and transparent FETs that show unchanged performance up to 1.5% strain. These heterostructure devices consisting of ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) materials open up a new route toward high-performance flexible and transparent electronics.