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Vapour–liquid–solid growth of monolayer MoS2 nanoribbons

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 535–542 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Chemical vapour deposition of two-dimensional materials typically involves the conversion of vapour precursors to solid products in a vapour–solid–solid mode. Here, we report the vapour–liquid–solid growth of monolayer MoS2, yielding highly crystalline ribbons with a width of few tens to thousands of nanometres. This vapour–liquid–solid growth is triggered by the reaction between MoO3 and NaCl, which results in the formation of molten Na–Mo–O droplets. These droplets mediate the growth of MoS2 ribbons in the ‘crawling mode’ when saturated with sulfur. The locally well-defined orientations of the ribbons reveal the regular horizontal motion of the droplets during growth. Using atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy and second harmonic generation microscopy, we show that the ribbons are grown homoepitaxially on monolayer MoS2 with predominantly 2H- or 3R-type stacking. Our findings highlight the prospects for the controlled growth of atomically thin nanostructure arrays for nanoelectronic devices and the development of unique mixed-dimensional structures.

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Fig. 1: Morphology and properties of VLS-MoS2 ribbons grown on a NaCl single crystal.
Fig. 2: VLS homoepitaxy of MoS2 ribbons on monolayer MoS2.
Fig. 3: STEM images of homoepitaxially grown MoS2 ribbons on monolayer MoS2.
Fig. 4: SHG microscopy of homoepitaxially grown MoS2 ribbons on monolayer MoS2.
Fig. 5: Schematic illustration of the possible ribbon formation mechanism.
Fig. 6: DFT-MD simulation of the MoS2 precipitation process.

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Acknowledgements

G.E. acknowledges the Singapore National Research Foundation for funding the research under an NRF Research Fellowship (NRF-NRFF2011-02) and medium-sized centre programme. G.E. also acknowledges support from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, under AcRF Tier 2 (MOE2015-T2-2-123, MOE2017-T2-1-134). Y.-C.L. and K.S. acknowledge support from JSPS KAKENHI (JP16H06333). T.T. acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI (JP16H00922). Jing W. acknowledges A*STAR Pharos Funding from the Science and Engineering Research Council (grant no. 1527200015). F.D. acknowledges support from the Institute for Basic Science (IBS-R019-D1). S.L. acknowledges Y. Sun for helpful discussion and thanks all staff members of the Nanofabrication group at NIMS for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shisheng Li, Zhuo Wang, Zehua Hu, Junyong Wang, Leiqiang Chu, Weijie Zhao, Wei Chen, Andrew Thye Shen Wee & Goki Eda

  2. Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shisheng Li, Zhuo Wang, Zehua Hu, Junyong Wang, Qi Zhang, Leiqiang Chu, Weijie Zhao, Wei Chen, Andrew Thye Shen Wee & Goki Eda

  3. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan

    Shisheng Li, Dai-Ming Tang, Takaaki Taniguchi & Minoru Osada

  4. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

    Yung-Chang Lin & Kazu Suenaga

  5. Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, Institute for Basic Science, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Wen Zhao & Feng Ding

  6. Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, Singapore

    Jing Wu

  7. International Collaborative Laboratory of 2D Materials for Optoelectronics Science and Technology, College of Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Zhuo Wang

  8. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Youde Shen

  9. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Hai Zhu, Wei Chen, Qing-Hua Xu & Goki Eda

  10. Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China

    Chang Liu

  11. Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Zhipei Sun

  12. QTF Centre of Excellence, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

    Zhipei Sun

  13. Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (iMaSS), Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Minoru Osada

  14. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazu Suenaga

  15. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Feng Ding

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Contributions

S.L. designed and conducted the VLS growth. Y.-C.L. and K.S. performed and interpreted the STEM data. S.L., Jing W., Y.S., D.-M.T, C.L., Wen Z., F.D. and G.E. interpreted the VLS growth. Z.W., H.Z., Z.S., Q.-H.X. and A.T.S.W. performed and analysed the SHG data. S.L., Junyong W., Weijie Z. and L.C. studied and analysed the Raman, photoluminescence, AFM and electrical properties. S.L. and Q.Z. performed the TGA and XRD experiments. S.L., Z.H., W.C., T.T. and M.O. conducted the growth of MoX2, WX2 (X = S, Se, Te) from sodium molybdate and sodium tungstate and analysed the growth products. Wen Z. and F.D. carried out the DFT-MD simulations. S.L., Y.-C.L., Wen Z., F.D. and G.E. wrote the paper. All the authors discussed and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shisheng Li or Goki Eda.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–13, Supplementary References

Supplementary Video 1

DFT-MD simulation side-view

Supplementary Video 2

DFT-MD simulation top-view

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Li, S., Lin, YC., Zhao, W. et al. Vapour–liquid–solid growth of monolayer MoS2 nanoribbons. Nature Mater 17, 535–542 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0055-z

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