Photoconductivity of few-layered p-WSe2 phototransistors via multi-terminal measurements

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that multi-terminal measurements significantly enhance the observed photoconductivity in few-layer p-WSe2 transistors, revealing their greater potential for optoelectronic applications than previously reported.

Contribution

The paper introduces a multi-terminal measurement approach to accurately assess photoconductivity in p-WSe2 transistors, showing much higher responsivity and quantum efficiency than two-terminal methods.

Findings

Four-terminal configuration yields 370% higher responsivity.

External quantum efficiency increases to ~20000%.

Photoconductivity is severely underestimated in prior two-terminal studies.

Abstract

Recently, two-dimensional materials and in particular transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) were extensively studied because of their strong light-matter interaction and the remarkable optoelectronic response of their field-effect transistors (FETs). Here, we report a photoconductivity study from FETs built from few-layers of p-WSe2 measured in a multi-terminal configuration under illumination by a 532 nm laser source. The photogenerated current was measured as a function of the incident optical power, of the drain-to-source bias and of the gate voltage. We observe a considerably larger photoconductivity when the phototransistors were measured via a four-terminal configuration when compared to a two-terminal one. For an incident laser power of 248 nW, we extract 18 A/W and ~4000% for the two-terminal responsivity (R) and the concomitant external quantum efficiency (EQE) respectively, when a bias voltage Vds = 1 V and a gate voltage Vbg = 10 V are applied to the sample. R and EQE are observed to increase by 370% to ~85 A/W and ~20000% respectively, when using a four-terminal configuration. Thus, we conclude that previous reports have severely underestimated the optoelectronic response of transition metal dichalcogenides, which in fact reveals a remarkable potential for photosensing applications.