Highly Reversible Molecular Photoswitches with Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Electrodes

The molecule-electrode coupling plays an essential role in photoresponsive devices with photochromic molecules, and the strong coupling between the molecule and the conventional electrodes leads to/ the quenching effect and limits the reversibility of molecular photoswitches. In this work, we developed a strategy of using transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) electrodes to fabricate the thiol azobenzene (TAB) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) junctions with the eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) technique. The current-voltage characteristics of the EGaIn/GaOx//TAB/TMDCs photoswitches showed an almost 100% reversible photoswitching behavior, which increased by similar to 28% compared to EGaIn/GaOx//TAB/AuTS photoswitches. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed the coupling strength of the TAB-TMDCs electrode decreased by 42% compared to that of the TAB-AuTS electrode, giving rise to improved reversibility. our work demonstrated the feasibility of 2D TMDCs for fabricating SAMs-based photoswitches with unprecedentedly high reversibility. A strategy for fabricating molecular photoswitch devices with the combined self-assembled monolayers and eutectic gallium-indium techniques is reported. The current-voltage characteristics of EGaIn/GaOx//molecule/TMDCs photoswitches exhibit reversibility as excellent as almost 100%. This work demonstrates the promise of transition metal dichalcogenides electrodes (TMDCs) to express the intrinsic molecular properties and opens a new path for the design and fabrication nanoelectronic devices.image