Field‐Effect Transistors from Artificial Charged Domain Walls in Stacked Van der Waals Ferroelectric α‐In <sub>2</sub> Se <sub>3</sub>
Ferroelectric charged domain walls (CDWs) offer emergent electronic states that can serve as functional elements in high-density nonvolatile memory and neuromorphic computing. Yet, poor conductivity, structural instability, and lack of deterministic control limit their practical use. Moreover, the CDWs are typically out-of-plane and buried interfaces, which prohibits electrical access and prevents gate control of their carrier density. This work demonstrates the fabrication of artificial in-plane CDWs by stacking oppositely polarized flakes of van der Waals (vdW) ferroelectric <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:semantics><mml:mi>α</mml:mi> <mml:annotation>$\alpha$</mml:annotation></mml:semantics> </mml:math> -In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>. Edge contact is utilized to electrically access the CDWs and integrate them into CDW-based field-effect transistors (CDW-FETs). CDW-FETs exhibit room-temperature conductance up to four orders of magnitude higher than single domains, exceeding previously reported CDWs by 2-9 orders of magnitude. Electron microscopy imaging reveals atomic reconstruction and interfacial heterogeneity in CDWs. Temperature and gate-dependent electrical and magneto-transport measurements confirm that interfacial band bending governs transport. Two transport mechanisms are identified in these CDW-FETs: variable-range hopping and thermally activated traps, showing a transition temperature of 80 K. These results establish artificial CDWs as on-demand, designable conductive channels in vdW ferroelectrics, advancing the understanding of CDW conduction mechanisms and bridging the gap toward device integration.
Authors
- Haiyue Dong
- Shahriar Muhammad Nahid (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0049-6152)
- Arend M. van der Zande (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5104-9646)
- Gillian Nolan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2356-9075)
- Nadya Mason
- Pinshane Y. Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1095-1833)
- SungWoo Nam
Institutions
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- University of Chicago (US)
- Irvine University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Materials
- Published
- 2026-01-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202523096
- Primary Topic
- 2D Materials and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00