Monolayer Organic Crystals for Ultrahigh Performance Molecular Diodes

Abstract

Molecular diodes are of considerable interest for the increasing technical demands of device miniaturization. However, the molecular diode performance remains contact-limited, which represents a major challenge for the advancement of rectification ratio and conductance. Here, it is demonstrated that high-quality ultrathin organic semiconductors can be grown on several classes of metal substrates via solution-shearing epitaxy, with a well-controlled number of layers and monolayer single crystal over 1 mm. The crystals are atomically smooth and pinhole-free, providing a native interface for high-performance monolayer molecular diodes. As a result, the monolayer molecular diodes show record-high rectification ratio up to 5 × 108, ideality factor close to unity, aggressive unit conductance over 103 S cm−2, ultrahigh breakdown electric field, excellent electrical stability, and well-defined contact interface. Large-area monolayer molecular diode arrays with 100% yield and excellent uniformity in the diode metrics are further fabricated. These results suggest that monolayer molecular crystals have great potential to build reliable, high-performance molecular diodes and deeply understand their intrinsic electronic behavior.