Dramatic Impact of Dimensionality on the Electrostatics of P-N Junctions and Its Sensing and Switching Applications

Low-dimensional material systems provide a unique set of properties useful for solid-state devices. The building block of these devices is the p-n junction. In this paper, we present a dramatic difference in the electrostatics of p-n junctions in lower dimensional systems, as against the well understood three dimensional (3-D) systems. Reducing the dimensionality increases the depletion width significantly. We propose a novel method to derive analytic equations in 2-D and 1-D that considers the impact of neutral regions. The analytical results show an excellent match with both the experimental measurements and numerical simulations. The square root dependence of the depletion width on the ratio of dielectric constant and doping in 3-D changes to a linear and exponential dependence for 2-D and 1-D, respectively. This higher sensitivity of 1-D p-n junctions to its control parameters can be used toward new sensors. Utilizing the unconventional electrostatics of these low-dimensional junctions for sensing and switching applications has been discussed and a novel sensor is proposed.