Transverse electric effects in charge-coupled van der Waals ribbons made of anisotropic 2D crystals

Abstract

We consider van der Waals ribbons made from atomically thin charge-coupled monolayers of different anisotropies. It is found that electric fields applied to such ribbons induce macroscopically large electric effects: transverse redistributions of the carriers with formation of charged domains of enhanced and depleted electron concentrations and spatially dependent transverse electric fields different in each of the monolayers. The amplitudes of the electron redistributions are increased with an increase in the applied electric field. If V denotes the number of charge-coupled layers, in high fields, the enhanced electron concentrations in the domains can be by factor V larger than the density of initial doping, while the sizes of these domains reach 1/V-part of the ribbon width. The spatial sequence of the domains in different layers is determined by values of their anisotropy factors. We suggest that the studied transverse effects can be used for the realization of novel electrically controlled devices based on the in-plane anisotropy and charge separation.