Gate tunable giant anisotropic resistance in ultra-thin GaTe

Abstract: In crystals, the duplication of atoms often follows different periodicity along different directions. It thus gives rise to the so called anisotropy, which is usually even more pronounced in two dimensional (2D) materials due to the absence of $\textbf{z}$ dimension. Indeed, in the emerging 2D materials, electrical anisotropy has been one of the focuses in recent experimental efforts. However, key understandings of the in-plane anisotropic resistance in low-symmetry 2D materials, as well as demonstrations of model devices taking advantage of it, have proven difficult. Here, we show that, in few-layered semiconducting GaTe, electrical conductivity along $\textbf{x}$ and $\textbf{y}$ directions of the 2D crystal can be gate tuned from a ratio of less than one order to as large as 10$^{3}$. This effect is further demonstrated to yield an anisotropic memory resistor behaviour in ultra-thin GaTe, when equipped with an architecture of van der Waals floating gate. Our findings of gate tunable giant anisotropic resistance (GAR) effect pave the way for potential applications in nano-electronics such as multifunctional directional memories in the 2D limit.