Reconfigurable electronics by disassembling and reassembling van der Waals heterostructures

Van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) have attracted tremendous interest owing to the ability to assemble diverse building blocks without the constraints of lattice matching and processing compatibility. However, once assembled, the fabricated vdWHs can hardly be separated into individual building blocks for further manipulation, mainly due to technical difficulties in the disassembling process. Here, we show a method to disassemble the as-fabricated vdWHs into individual building blocks, which can be further reassembled into new vdWHs with different device functionalities. With this technique, we demonstrate reconfigurable transistors from n-type to p-type and back-gate to dual-gate structures through re-stacking. Furthermore, reconfigurable device behaviors from floating gate memory to Schottky diode and reconfigurable anisotropic Raman behaviors have been obtained through layer re-sequencing and re-twisting, respectively. Our results could lead to a reverse engineering concept of disassembled vdWHs electronics in parallel with state-of-the-art vdWHs electronics, offering a general method for multi-functional pluggable electronics and optoelectronics with limited material building blocks. Here, the authors report a method to fabricate reconfigurable electronic devices based on 2D materials by using polyvinyl alcohol as substrate. This technique enables repeatable disassembling and reassembling of van der Waals heterostructures with different functionalities.

Automated summary

The authors present a method to disassemble fabricated vdWHs into individual building blocks for further reassembly into new vdWHs with different functionalities. This technique enables the creation of reconfigurable electronic devices based on 2D materials with the ability to switch between different device structures and behaviors through layer re-sequencing and re-twisting.