Heterostructures based on two dimensional (2D) materials offer the possibility to achieve synergistic functionalities which otherwise remain secluded by their individual counterparts. Herein ferroelectric polarization switching in alpha-In2Se3 has been utilized to engineer multilevel non-volatile conduction states in partially overlapping alpha-In2Se3-MoS2 based ferroelectric semiconducting field effect device. In particular, we demonstrate how the intercoupled ferroelectric nature of alpha-In2Se3 allows to non-volatilely switch between n-i and n-i-n type junction configurations based on a novel edge state actuation mechanism, paving the way for sub-nanometric scale non-volatile device miniaturization. Furthermore the induced asymmetric polarization enables enhanced photogenerated carriers separation resulting in extremely high photoresponse of 1275 AW-1 in the visible range and strong non-volatile modulation of the bright A- and B- excitonic emission channels in the overlaying MoS2 monolayer. Our results show significant potential to harness the switchable polarization in partially overlapping alpha-In2Se3-MoS2 based FeFETs to engineer multimodal non-volatile nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices.
Published in: "arXiv Material Science".