Wafer scale synthesis of organic semiconductor nanosheets for van der Waals heterojunction devices

Abstract Organic semiconductors (OSC) are widely used for consumer electronic products owing to their attractive properties such as flexibility and low production cost. Atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are another class of emerging materials with superior electronic and optical properties. Integrating them into van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures provides an opportunity to harness the advantages of both material systems. However, building such heterojunctions by conventional physical vapor deposition (PVD) of OSCs is challenging, since the growth is disrupted due to limited diffusion of the molecules on the TMD surface. Here we report wafer-scale (3-inch) fabrication of transferable OSC nanosheets with thickness down to 15 nm, which enable the realization of heterojunction devices. By controlled dissolution of a poly(acrylic acid) film, on which the OSC films were grown by PVD, they can be released and transferred onto arbitrary substrates. OSC crystal quality and optical anisotropy are preserved during the transfer process. By transferring OSC nanosheets (p-type) onto prefabricated electrodes and TMD monolayers (n-type), we fabricate and characterize various electronic devices including unipolar, ambipolar and antiambipolar field-effect transistors. Such vdW p-n heterojunction devices open up a wide range of possible applications ranging from ultrafast photodetectors to conformal electronics.