Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2017) 132: 191
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2017-11480-2

Regular Article

Layer-engineered I-V characteristics of p-Si/WS₂ Van der Waals Heterostructure diode

¹ Department of Physical Sciences, P.D. Patel Institute of Applied Sciences, Changa-388 421, Charusat, India
² Department of Physics, Sardar Patel University, Vidyanagar-388 001, Vallabh, India

^* e-mail: cksumesh.cv@charusat.ac.in

Received: 20 January 2017
Accepted: 30 March 2017
Published online: 26 April 2017

Abstract

Single crystals of WS₂ were exfoliated micromechanically and transferred layer by layer on top of a p -Si wafer, forming a heterogeneous junction diode at the interface of p -Si/WS₂. The forward and reverse biasing of the diode operates satisfactorily with an increasing turn on voltage as the layer thickness decreases. We further found that the value of the ideality factor improves up to 1.6 after exfoliation and there is a 98% increase in the diode rectification ratio compared to the un-exfoliated crystal. The band gap tuning with thickness by the simple method of mechanical exfoliation and transferring makes them inexpensive, and multifunctional bulk-like devices hold the promise for integration of WS₂ layers with Si-based electronics to develop highly efficient optoelectronic devices.