Reconfigurable Doping of Atomically Thin Van Der Waals Semiconductors by Light Colours

Abstract

We report reversible photo-induced doping on atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors, whose channel polarities can be repeatedly reconfigured from n-type to p-type and vice versa with light colours. Evidently, this reconfigurable doping is explained by selective light-lattice interactions, such as the characteristic point defect generations and the charged ion incorporation. The precise tunability of the channel polarity and doping levels in a reconfigurable manner of this work may provide a key technological solution toward realisation of new types of monolithic integrated circuitry on atomically thin vdW semiconductors. We demonstrate such a proof-of-concept device, a reconfigurable complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device on a single vdW semiconductor channel, in which the circuit functions can be dynamically reset from a CMOS inverter to a CMOS switch upon a single shot of light with different colours.