Van der Waals (vdW) heterodiodes based on two-dimensional (2D) materials have shown tremendous potential in photovoltaic detectors and solar cells. However, such 2D photovoltaic devices are limited by low quantum efficiencies due to the severe interface recombination and the inefficient contacts. Here, we report an efficient MoS2/AsP vdW hetero-photodiode utilizing a unilateral depletion region band design and a narrow bandgap AsP as an effective carrier selective contact. The unilateral depletion region is verified via both the Fermi level and the infrared response measurements. The device demonstrates a pronounced photovoltaic behavior with a short-circuit current of 1.3 μA and a large open-circuit voltage of 0.61 V under visible light illumination. Especially, a high external quantum efficiency of 71%, a record high power conversion efficiency of 9% and a fast response time of 9 μs are achieved. Our work suggests an effective scheme to design high-performance photovoltaic devices assembled by 2D materials.

One-dimensional InAs nanowires (NWs) have been widely researched in recent years. Features of high mobility and narrow bandgap reveal its great potential of optoelectronic applications. However, most reported work about InAs NW-based photodetectors is limited to the visible waveband. Although some work shows certain response for near-infrared light, the problems of large dark current and small light on/off ratio are unsolved, thus significantly restricting the detectivity. Here in this work, a novel "visible light-assisted dark-current suppressing method" is proposed for the first time to reduce the dark current and enhance the infrared photodetection of single InAs NW photodetectors. This method effectively increases the barrier height of the metal-semiconductor contact, thus significantly making the device a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodiode. These MSM photodiodes demonstrate broadband detection from less than 1 μm to more than 3 μm and a fast response of tens of microseconds. A high detectivity of ∼10 Jones has been achieved for the wavelength of 2000 nm at a low bias voltage of 0.1 V with corresponding responsivity of as much as 40 A/W. Even for the incident wavelength of 3113 nm, a detectivity of ∼10 Jones and a responsivity of 0.6 A/W have been obtained. Our work has achieved an extended detection waveband for single InAs NW photodetector from visible and near-infrared to mid-infrared. The excellent performance for infrared detection demonstrated the great potential of narrow bandgap NWs for future infrared optoelectronic applications.

In recent years, 2D layered materials have been considered as promising photon absorption channel media for next‐generation phototransistors due to their atomic thickness, easily tailored single‐crystal van der Waals heterostructures, ultrafast optoelectronic characteristics, and broadband photon absorption. However, the photosensitivity obtained from such devices, even under a large bias voltage, is still unsatisfactory until now. In this paper, high‐sensitivity phototransistors based on WS2 and MoS2 are proposed, designed, and fabricated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) embedded in the gate dielectric. These AuNPs, located between the tunneling and blocking dielectric, are found to enable efficient electron trapping in order to strongly suppress dark current. Ultralow dark current (10−11 A), high photoresponsivity (1090 A W−1), and high detectivity (3.5 × 1011 Jones) are obtained for the WS2 devices under a low source/drain and a zero gate voltage at a wavelength of 520 nm. These results demonstrate that the floating‐gate memory structure is an effective configuration to achieve high‐performance 2D electronic/optoelectronic devices.