Molecular-Scale Selector Implemented by a Combination of Different Molecular Dipole Orientation and Two-Dimensional Semiconductors

Abstract

Abstract Body: Diverse types of molecules such as a donor-s-acceptor molecules and ferrocenyl alkanethiol have been suggested as potential candidates for the electronic component of a molecular rectifier.[1,2] Recently, we demonstrated a novel strategy and design rule for realizing molecular-scale diode features based on the energy band engineering between simple alkanethiol or conjugated molecules and two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors.[3] Here, we firstly suggest a molecular-scale (sub-2nm) selector where is based on a heterojunction structure with a non-functional molecule(1-octanethiol, tridecafluoro-1-octanethiol) and two-dimensional semiconductor(MoS2, WSe2), which can be utilized to prevent the crosstalk signal in the crossbar memory array. According to direction of molecular dipole moment, the type of 2D semiconductors (1L-MoS2 of n-type), and the metal work function (Au and Pt), we found the nonlinearity at Vr/2 scheme can be significantly varied, e.x., 1.2± 101 for Au/C8/1L-MoS2/Au and 3.5 ± 102 for Au/F6H2/1L-MoS2/Pt. This phenomenon can be understood based on the interfacial energy band adjustment of 2D semiconductor in molecular heterojunction according to the direction of molecular dipole moment. The maximum non-linearity value is found to be 2.7± 103 for the case of Au/F6H2/1L-MoS2/Pt. With this non-linearity, the suggested molecular selector enables to extend the array size up to ~ 9Gbit crossbar array. [1] Díez-Pérez, I. et al. Rectification and stability of a single molecular diode with controlled orientation. Nat. Chem. 1, 635 (2009). [2] Chen, X. et al. Molecular diodes with rectification ratios exceeding 105 driven by electrostatic interactions. Nat. Nanotechnol. 12, 797 (2017). [3] Shin, J. et al. Tunable rectification in a molecular heterojunction with two-dimensional semiconductors. Nat. Commun. 11, 1412 (2020).