Thickness-dependence of hydrogen-induced phase transition in MoTe${}_2$

Abstract

Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) usually exist in two or more structural phases with different physical properties, and can be repeatedly switched between these phases via different stimuli, making them potentially useful for memory devices. An understanding of the physics of interfaces between the TMDs and conventional semiconductors, or other 2D-crystals forming heterogenous or homogeneous assemblies is central to their successful application in technologies. However, to date, most theoretical works have explored phase-change properties of isolated TMD monolayers in vacuum. Using \textit{ab-initio} calculations, we show how interfacial effects modify the thermodynamics and kinetics of the phase transition by studying hydrogen-induced transitions in monolayers and bilayers of MoTe${}_2$. The phase-change properties of MoTe${}_2$ show substantial thickness-dependence, with the timescale for a transition in the hydrogenated bilayer being about $10^7$-times longer than that in a monolayer at room temperature. Our study highlights the importance of taking effects of immediate environment into account when predicting properties of 2D crystals.

References in corpus (6)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Field Effect Transistor in Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Phase change memory technology
• Superconductivity in Weyl Semimetal Candidate MoTe2
• Structural Semiconductor-to-Semimetal Phase Transition in Two-Dimensional Materials Induced by Electrostatic Gating
• Arc-tunable Weyl Fermion metallic state in Mo${}_x$W${}_{1-x}$Te${}_2$
• Engineering the structural and electronic phases of MoTe2 through W substitution

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Defect-induced $4p$-magnetism in layered platinum diselenide
• Predicting phase preferences of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides using machine learning