Layer-by-layer epitaxial growth of scalable WSe2 on sapphire by molecular-beam epitaxy

Abstract

Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) provides a simple but powerful way to synthesize large-area high-quality thin films and heterostructures of a wide variety of materials including accomplished group III-V and II-VI semiconductors as well as newly-developing oxides and chalcogenides, leading to major discoveries in condensed-matter physics. For two-dimensional (2D) materials, however, main fabrication routes have been mechanical exfoliation and chemical-vapor deposition by making good use of weak van der Waals bonding nature between neighboring layers, and MBE growth of 2D materials, in particular on insulating substrates for transport measurements, has been limited despite its fundamental importance for future advanced research. Here we report layer-by-layer epitaxial growth of scalable transition-metal dichalocogenide (TMDC) thin films on insulating substrates by MBE, and demonstrate ambipolar transistor operation. The proposed growth protocol is broadly applicable to other TMDC, providing a key milestone toward fabrication of van der Waals heterostructures with various 2D materials for novel properties and functionalities.

References in corpus (6)

• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Synthesis of Large-Area MoS2 Atomic Layers with Chemical Vapor Deposition
• Two-Dimensional Material Nanophotonics
• Observation of giant bandgap renormalization and excitonic effects in a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductor
• High-temperature interface superconductivity between metallic and insulating cuprates

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• Pinpoint pick-up and bubble-free assembly of 2D materials using PDMS/PMMA polymers with lens shapes
• Machine-learning-assisted analysis of transition metal dichalcogenide thin-film growth
• Large-area van der Waals epitaxy and magnetic characterization of Fe${}_3$GeTe${}_2$ films on graphene
• Large-area synthesis of ferromagnetic Fe${}_{5-x}$GeTe${}_2$/graphene van der Waals heterostructures with Curie temperature above room temperature
• Predicting phase preferences of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides using machine learning
• Self-assembled nano-columns in Bi2Se3 grown by molecular beam epitaxy
• Thermal Stability of Hafnium Zirconium Oxide on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Selenization of V${}_2$O${}_5$/WO${}_3$ Bilayers for Tuned Optoelectronic Response of WSe${}_2$ Films
• $WS{e}_2$ Monolayers Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy on hBN
• Photoluminescence efficiency of MBE-grown MoSe${}_2$ monolayers featuring sharp excitonic lines and diverse grain structures
• Epitaxy of new layered materials: 2D chalcogenides and challenges of weak van der Waals interactions
• Growth and crystallographic structure of TiTe${}_2$ on Au(111): From sub-monolayer structures to single- and multi-layer films