Near-ideal van der Waals rectifiers based on all-two-dimensional Schottky junctions.

The applications of any two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor devices cannot bypass the control of metal-semiconductor interfaces, which can be severely affected by complex Fermi pinning effects and defect states. Here, we report a near-ideal rectifier in the all-2D Schottky junctions composed of the 2D metal 1 T'-MoTe and the semiconducting monolayer MoS. We show that the van der Waals integration of the two 2D materials can efficiently address the severe Fermi pinning effect generated by conventional metals, leading to increased Schottky barrier height. Furthermore, by healing original atom-vacancies and reducing the intrinsic defect doping in MoS, the Schottky barrier width can be effectively enlarged by 59%. The 1 T'-MoTe/healed-MoS rectifier exhibits a near-unity ideality factor of ~1.6, a rectifying ratio of >5 × 10, and high external quantum efficiency exceeding 20%. Finally, we generalize the barrier optimization strategy to other Schottky junctions, defining an alternative solution to enhance the performance of 2D-material-based electronic devices.