Efficient Suppression of Charge Recombination in Self-Powered Photodetectors with Band-Aligned Transferred van der Waals Metal Electrodes

Recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs dominates the photocarrier lifetime and then influences the performance of photodetectors and solar cells. In this work, we report the design and fabrication of band-aligned van der Waals-contacted photodetectors with atomically sharp and flat metal-semiconductor interfaces through transferred metal integration. A unity factor α is achieved, which is essentially independent of the wavelength of the light, from ultraviolet to near-infrared, indicating effective suppression of charge recombination by the device. The short-circuit current (0.16 μA) and open-circuit voltage (0.72 V) of the band-aligned van der Waals-contacted devices are at least 1 order of magnitude greater than those of band-aligned deposited devices and 2 orders of magnitude greater than those of non-band-aligned deposited devices. High responsivity, detectivity, and polarization sensitivity ratio of 283 mA/W, 6.89 × 1012 cm Hz1/2 W-1, and 3.05, respectively, are also obtained for the device at zero bias. Moreover, the efficient suppression of charge recombination in our air-stable self-powered photodetectors also results in a fast response speed and leads to polarization-sensitive performance.