Does the N material need to be directly touching the P material?
It won't work as a PN junction rectifier, because the rectifying action of such a diode is caused by forming a depletion region at the joint.  Between the N and P materials, you've placed a metal.  Metal is an enormous source of electrons and of holes, that can never become depleted.
What MIGHT happen, is that a semiconductor-metal junction can also be a diode (not P-N, but P-metal or metal-N), in which case the depletion happens in the P or N material only.     Semiconductor-to-metal contact metals are chosen, engineered to be nonrectifying.  Aluminum alloyed to silicon is nonrectifying, aka "ohmic"; platinum against silicon makes a (Schottky barrier) rectifier.