Anisotropic photoresponse of layered rhenium disulfide synaptic transistors

Layered ReS₂ with direct bandgap and strong in-plane anisotropy shows great potential to develop high-performance angle-resolved photodetectors and optoelectronic devices. However, systematic characterizations of the angle-dependent photoresponse of ReS₂ are still very limited. Here, we studied the anisotropic photoresponse of layered ReS₂ phototransistors in depth. Angel-resolved Raman spectrum and field-effect mobility are tested to confirm the inconsistency between its electrical and optical anisotropies, which are along 120° and 90°, respectively. We further measured the angle-resolved photoresponse of a ReS₂ transistor with 6 diagonally paired electrodes. The maximum photoresponsivity exceeds 0.515 A·W^-1 along b-axis, which is around 3.8 times larger than that along the direction perpendicular to b axis, which is consistent with the optical anisotropic directions. The incident wavelength- and power-dependent photoresponse measurement along two anisotropic axes further demonstrates that b axis has stronger light-ReS₂ interaction, which explains the anisotropic photoresponse. We also observed angle-dependent photoresistive switching behavior of the ReS₂ transistor, which leads to the formation of angle-resolved phototransistor memory. It has simplified structure to create dynamic optoelectronic resistive random access memory controlled spatially through polarized light. This capability has great potential for real-time pattern recognition and photoconfiguration of artificial neural networks (ANN) in a wide spectral range of sensitivity provided by polarized light.