In semiconductor manufacturing,PN junction is formed by introducing dopants to activate neighboring electron and hole conductance.To avoid structural distortion and failure,it generally requires the foreign dopants localize in the designated micro-areas.This,however,is challenging due to an inevitable interdiffusion process.Here we report a brand-new junction architecture,called"layer PN junction",that might break through such limit and help redefine the semiconductor device architecture.Different from all existing semiconductors,we find that a variety of van der Waals materials are doping themselves from n-to p-type conductance with an increasing/decreasing layer-number.It means the capability of constructing homogeneous PN junctions in monolayers'dimension/precision,with record high rectification-ratio(＞105)and low cut-off current(＜1 pA).More importantly,it spawns intriguing functionalities,like gate-switchable-rectification and noise-signal decoupled avalanching.Findings disclosed here might open up a path to develop novel nanodevice applications,where the geometrical size becomes the only critical factor in tuning charge-carrier distribution and thus functionality.

State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics,Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Shanghai 200083,China;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,100049 Beijing,China;Jiangsu Key Laboratory of ASIC Design,School of Information Science and Technology,Nantong University,Nantong 226019 Jiangsu,China;School of Physical Science and Technology,ShanghaiTech University,Shanghai 201210,China

[1]Hui Xia;Man Luo;Wenjing Wang;Hailu Wang;Tianxin Li;Zhen Wang;Hangyu Xu;Yue Chen;Yong Zhou;Fang Wang;Runzhang Xie;Peng Wang;Weida Hu;Wei Lu-.Pristine PN junction toward atomic layer devices)[J].光：科学与应用（英文版）,2022(07):1515-1522

spawns,avalanching

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