Negative Photoconductance in van der Waals Heterostructure-Based Floating Gate Phototransistor

Abstract

van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures made of two-dimensional materials have been demonstrated to be versatile architectures for optoelectronic applications due to strong light–-matter interactions. However, most light-controlled phenomena and applications in the vdW heterostructures rely on positive photoconductance (PPC). Negative photoconductance (NPC) has not yet been reported in vdW heterostructures. Here we report the observation of the NPC in the ReS 2 /h-BN/MoS 2 vdW heterostructure-based floating gate phototransistor. The fabricated devices exhibit excellent performance of nonvolatile memory without light illumination. More interestingly, we observe a gate-tunable transition between the PPC and the NPC under the light illumination. The observed NPC phenomenon can be attributed to charge transfer between the floating gate and the conduction channel. Furthermore, we show that control of NPC through light intensity is promising in realization of light-tunable multibit memory devices. Our results may enable potential applications in multifunctional memories and optoelectronic devices.