Van der Waals epitaxial growth of two-dimensional PbSe and its high-performance heterostructure devices

Inspired by the great success of ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) layered crystals, more and more attention is being paid to preparing 2D nanostructures from non-layered materials. They can significantly enrich the 2D materials and 2D heterostructures family, extend their application prospects, and bring us distinct properties from their bulk counterparts due to the strong 2D confinement effect. However, the realization of 2D non-layered semiconductors with strong light-harvesting capability and the ability to construct high-performance 2D heterostructures is still a critical challenge. Herein, we successfully synthesized 2D PbSe semiconductors with a large lateral dimension and ultrathin thickness via van der Waals epitaxy. The fabricated 2D PbSe device exhibits good electrical conductivity and superior multi-wavelength photoresponse performance with high responsivity (∼10³ A/W) and impressive detectivity (∼2 × 10¹¹ Jones). Furthermore, we demonstrate that 2D PbSe nanosheets can serve as component units for constructing high-performance heterostructure devices. With our strategy, ultrahigh current on/off ratio (∼10⁸) and rectification ratio (∼10⁶), as well as high responsivity (∼3 × 10³ A/W) and detectivity (∼7 × 10¹² Jones), can be achieved in PbSe/MoS₂ back-gated transistors. These results indicate that 2D PbSe nanosheets and their heterostructures have tremendous applications potential in electrical and optoelectronic devices.