2D ferroelectric narrow-bandgap semiconductor Wurtzite’ type α-In2Se3 and its silicon-compatible growth

2D van der Waals ferroelectrics, particularly α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, have emerged as an attractive building block for next-generation information storage technologies due to their moderate band gap and robust ferroelectricity stabilized by dipole locking. α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub> can adopt either the distorted zincblende or wurtzite structures; however, the wurtzite phase has yet to be experimentally validated, and its large-scale synthesis poses significant challenges. Here, we report an in-situ transport growth of centimeter-scale wurtzite type α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub> films directly on SiO<sub>2</sub> substrates using a process combining pulsed laser deposition and chemical vapor deposition. We demonstrate that it is a narrow bandgap ferroelectric semiconductor, featuring a Curie temperature exceeding 620 K, a tunable bandgap (0.8-1.6 eV) modulated by charged domain walls, and a large optical absorption coefficient of 1.3 × 10<sup>6</sup>/cm. Moreover, light absorption promotes the dynamic conductance range, linearity, and symmetry of the synapse devices, leading to a high recognition accuracy of 92.3% in a supervised pattern classification task for neuromorphic computing. Our findings demonstrate a ferroelectric polymorphism of In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, highlighting its potential in ferroelectric synapses for neuromorphic computing.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-08-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62822-7
Citations
16
Primary Topic
2D Materials and Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
8.28

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article

2D ferroelectric narrow-bandgap semiconductor Wurtzite’ type α-In2Se3 and its silicon-compatible growth

Weijin Hu, Kepeng Song, Yizhuo Li, Biaohong Huang et al.
16 citations
Nature Communications
2D Materials and Applications
8.28
article

2D ferroelectric narrow-bandgap semiconductor Wurtzite’ type α-In2Se3 and its silicon-compatible growth

Weijin Hu, Kepeng Song, Yizhuo Li, Biaohong Huang, Zhen Fan, Jianhang Qiu, Xiaofei Zhu, Fei Xue, Sajjad Ali, Yuxuan Jiang, Teng Yang, Lain‐Jong Li, Xingkun Ning, Chengbing Qin, Gang Yu Liu, Bing Li, Zhidong Zhang, Qiankun Li, Renhui Liu, Haoyue Deng
article en
16 citations

Abstract

2D van der Waals ferroelectrics, particularly α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, have emerged as an attractive building block for next-generation information storage technologies due to their moderate band gap and robust ferroelectricity stabilized by dipole locking. α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub> can adopt either the distorted zincblende or wurtzite structures; however, the wurtzite phase has yet to be experimentally validated, and its large-scale synthesis poses significant challenges. Here, we report an in-situ transport growth of centimeter-scale wurtzite type α-In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub> films directly on SiO<sub>2</sub> substrates using a process combining pulsed laser deposition and chemical vapor deposition. We demonstrate that it is a narrow bandgap ferroelectric semiconductor, featuring a Curie temperature exceeding 620 K, a tunable bandgap (0.8-1.6 eV) modulated by charged domain walls, and a large optical absorption coefficient of 1.3 × 10<sup>6</sup>/cm. Moreover, light absorption promotes the dynamic conductance range, linearity, and symmetry of the synapse devices, leading to a high recognition accuracy of 92.3% in a supervised pattern classification task for neuromorphic computing. Our findings demonstrate a ferroelectric polymorphism of In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, highlighting its potential in ferroelectric synapses for neuromorphic computing.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
University of Science and Technology of China (CN), Prince Sultan University (SA), Shandong University (CN), Shenyang University of Technology (CN), National University of Singapore (SG), Shanxi University (CN), South China Normal University (CN), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), University of Jinan (CN), Soochow University (CN), Institute of Metal Research (CN), International Centre for Materials Physics (CN), Hebei University (CN), Zhejiang University (CN)
Shandong University, National University of Singapore, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, South China Normal University, Shanxi University, Zhejiang University, Soochow University, Hebei University, University of Science and Technology of China, Prince Sultan University, Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science
Openalex Percentile: Top 2%
2D Materials and Applications
8.28
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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