Optoelectronic Properties of Tellurium Nanostructures

Tellurium nanostructures combine a narrow, tunable bandgap with strong anisotropic charge transport and pronounced spin–orbit interactions, yielding exceptional optoelectronic behaviour across ultraviolet to mid-infrared wavelengths. Their one-dimensional helical chains and two-dimensional layers support both p-type and n-type conduction, enabling complementary device architectures. Quantum confinement in nanowires and ultrathin nanosheets elevates the bandgap from the bulk value of 0.33 eV to above 1 eV, while phase control yields metallic or semiconducting behaviour within the same material system. In-plane anisotropy confers high polarisation sensitivity, making tellurium ideal for polarimetric imaging and directional photodetection. Robust ambient stability and wafer-scale synthesis advances support integration into thin-film transistors, photodetectors and bulk photovoltaic devices. Emerging applications span flexible neuromodulation interfaces, self-powered photodetectors and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor circuits. Together, these developments underline tellurium’s potential as a versatile platform for next-generation optoelectronic technologies.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have devised an amorphous p-type semiconductor by embedding tellurium into a suboxide matrix, achieving wafer-scale p-channel thin-film transistors with field-effect hole mobilities around 15 cm2 V−1 s−1 and on/off ratios up to 107, while maintaining long-term stability under bias and ambient ageing. In a complementary effort, phase-controlled synthesis on layered substrates has produced atomically thin α-tellurium nanosheets and β-tellurium nanoribbons. As thickness is reduced, α-phase films transition from metallic to n-type semiconducting, whereas β-phase ribbons exhibit p-type behaviour with on-state current densities exceeding 1500 µA µm−1 and air stability over months, paving the way for ultracompact, high-performance transistors.

Optoelectronic Properties of Tellurium Nanostructures publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in optoelectronic properties of tellurium nanostructures across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Tellurene: A two-dimensional or one-dimensional form of elemental tellurium exhibiting anisotropic optical and electronic properties.

Bulk Photovoltaic Effect (BPVE): Generation of photocurrent in non-centrosymmetric materials without p-n junctions across a broad spectral range.

Field-Effect Transistor (FET): A semiconductor device in which an electric field modulates conductivity in a channel to switch current on and off.

Phase Engineering: Control of crystalline phase and thickness to tailor electronic band structure and transport characteristics.

Spin–Orbit Coupling (SOC): Interaction between an electron’s spin and its orbital motion, leading to band splitting and topological effects.

Anisotropy: Direction-dependent physical properties arising from crystal symmetry or structural orientation.

References

1. Selenium-alloyed tellurium oxide for amorphous p-channel transistors. Nature (2024).
2. Giant infrared bulk photovoltaic effect in tellurene for broad-spectrum neuromodulation. Light: Science & Applications (2024).
3. Phase-engineered synthesis of atomically thin te single crystals with high on-state currents. Nature Communications (2024).
4. Stable mid-infrared polarization imaging based on quasi-2D tellurium at room temperature. Nature Communications (2020).
5. Two-Dimensional Tellurium: Progress, Challenges, and Prospects. Nano-Micro Letters (2020).
6. Growth of high-quality semiconducting tellurium films for high-performance p-channel field-effect transistors with wafer-scale uniformity. npj 2D Materials and Applications (2022).
7. A high performance self-powered photodetector based on a 1D Te–2D WS 2 mixed-dimensional heterostructure. Nanoscale Advances (2021).
8. Electronic and Optical Properties of Two-Dimensional Tellurene: From First-Principles Calculations. Nanomaterials (2019).