Heterostructures comprising two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors fabricated by individual stacking exhibit interesting characteristics owing to their 2D nature and atomically sharp interface. As an emerging 2D material, black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets have drawn much attention because of their small band gap semiconductor characteristics along with high mobility. Stacking structures composed of p-type BP and n-type transition metal dichalcogenides can produce an atomically sharp interface with van der Waals interaction which leads to p-n diode functionality. In this study, for the first time, we fabricated a heterojunction p-n diode composed of BP and WS. The rectification effects are examined for monolayer, bilayer, trilayer, and multilayer WS flakes in our BP/WS van der Waals heterojunction diodes and also verified by density function theory calculations. We report superior functionalities as compared to other van der Waals heterojunction, such as efficient gate-dependent static rectification of 2.6 × 10, temperature dependence, thickness dependence of rectification, and ideality factor of the device. The temperature dependence of Zener breakdown voltage and avalanche breakdown voltage were analyzed in the same device. Additionally, superior optoelectronic characteristics such as photoresponsivity of 500 mA/W and external quantum efficiency of 103% are achieved in the BP/WS van der Waals p-n diode, which is unprecedented for BP/transition metal dichalcogenides heterostructures. The BP/WS van der Waals p-n diodes have a profound potential to fabricate rectifiers, solar cells, and photovoltaic diodes in 2D semiconductor electronics and optoelectronics.

Recently, van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) based on transition‐metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted significant attention owing to their superior capabilities and multiple functionalities. Herein, a novel vdWH field‐effect transistor (FET) composed of molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2) and palladium diselenide (PdSe2) is studied for highly sensitive photodetection performance in the broad visible and near‐infrared (VNIR) region. A high rectification ratio of 6.3 × 105 is obtained, stemming from the sharp interface and low Schottky barriers of the MoTe2/PdSe2 vdWHs. It is also successfully demonstrated that the vdWH FET exhibits highly sensitive photo‐detecting abilities, such as noticeably high photoresponsivity (1.24 × 105 A W−1), specific detectivity (2.42 × 1014 Jones), and good external quantum efficiency (3.5 × 106), not only due to the intra‐TMD band‐to‐band transition but also due to the inter‐TMD charge transfer (CT) transition. Further, rapid rise (16.1 µs) and decay (31.1 µs) times are obtained under incident light with a wavelength of 2000 nm due to the CT transition, representing an outcome one order of magnitude faster than values currently in the literature. Such TMD‐based vdWH FETs would improve the photo‐gating characteristics and provide a platform for the realization of a highly sensitive photodetector in the broad VNIR region.

Van der Waals heterostructures composed of transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials have become a remarkable compact system that could offer an innovative architecture for advanced engineering in high-performance energy-harvesting and optoelectronic devices. Here, we report a novel van der Waals (vdW) TMD heterojunction photodiode composed of black phosphorus (p-BP) and palladium diselenide (n-PdSe2), which establish a high and tunable rectification and photoresponsivity. A high rectification up to ≈7.1 × 105 is achieved, which is successfully tuned by employing the back-gate voltage to the heterostructure devices. Besides, the device significantly shows the high and gate-controlled photoresponsivity of R = 9.6 × 105, 4.53 × 105 and 1.63 × 105 A W–1 under the influence of light of different wavelengths (λ = 532, 1064, and 1310 nm) in visible and near-infrared regions, respectively, because of interlayer optical transition and low Schottky. The device also demonstrates extraordinary values of detectivity (D = 5.8 × 1013 Jones) and external quantum efficiency (EQE ≈ 9.4 × 106), which are an order of magnitude higher than the currently reported values. The effective enhancement of photovoltaic characteristics in visible and infrared regions of this TMD heterostructure-based system has a huge potential in the field of optoelectronics to realize high-performance infrared photodetectors.

Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), the basic building blocks of integrated circuits, are deployed to control switching applications and logic operations. However, as the thickness of a conventional BJT device approaches a few atoms, its performance decreases substantially. The stacking of atomically thin 2D semiconductor materials is advantageous for manufacturing atomically thin BJT devices owing to the high carrier density of electrons and holes. Here, an atomically thin n-p-n BJT device composed of heavily doped molybdenum ditelluride (n-MoTe 2 ) and germanium selenide (p-GeSe) sheets stacked over each other by van der Waals interactions is reported. In a common-emitter configuration, MoTe 2 /GeSe/MoTe 2 BJT devices exhibit a considerably high current gain (β = I c /I b = 29.3) at V be = 2.5 V. The MoTe 2 / GeSe/MoTe 2 BJT device is employed to detect streptavidin biomolecules as analytes within <10 s. The real-time response of the functionalized BJT device is examined at various concentrations of streptavidin biomolecules ranging from 250 to 5 pm. Such vdW BJT devices can trigger the development of state-of-the-art electronic devices that can be used as biosensors to detect the various kinds of target DNA and proteins like spike protein of Covid-19.