A floating gate negative capacitance MoS₂ phototransistor with high photosensitivity

Monolayer MoS₂ exhibits interesting optoelectronic properties that have been utilized in applications such as photodetectors and light emitting diodes. For image sensing applications, improving the light sensitivity relies on achieving a low dark current that enables the detection weak light signals. Although previous reports on improving the detectivity have been explored with heterostructures and pn junction devices, some of these approaches lack CMOS compatibility processing and sufficient low dark current suppression. Steep slope transistors that overcome the Boltzmann tyranny can further enhance the performance in photodetectors by providing efficient extraction of photogenerated charges. Here, we report a monolayer MoS₂ floating gate negative capacitance phototransistor with the integration of a hafnium-zirconium oxide ferroelectric capacitor. In this study, a SS_min of 30 mV dec^-1, very low dark currents of 10^-13-10^-14 A, and a high detectivity of 7.2 × 10¹⁵ cm Hz^1/2 W^-1 were achieved under weak light illumination due to an enhancement in the photogating effect. In addition, its potential as an optical memory and as an optical synapse with excellent long-term potentiation characteristics in an artificial neural network was also explored. Overall, this device structure offers high photosensitivity to weak light signals for future low-powered optoelectronic applications.