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Vapour phase growth and grain boundary structure of molybdenum disulphide atomic layers

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 754–759 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Single-layered molybdenum disulphide with a direct bandgap is a promising two-dimensional material that goes beyond graphene for the next generation of nanoelectronics. Here, we report the controlled vapour phase synthesis of molybdenum disulphide atomic layers and elucidate a fundamental mechanism for the nucleation, growth, and grain boundary formation in its crystalline monolayers. Furthermore, a nucleation-controlled strategy is established to systematically promote the formation of large-area, single- and few-layered films. Using high-resolution electron microscopy imaging, the atomic structure and morphology of the grains and their boundaries in the polycrystalline molybdenum disulphide atomic layers are examined, and the primary mechanisms for grain boundary formation are evaluated. Grain boundaries consisting of 5- and 7- member rings are directly observed with atomic resolution, and their energy landscape is investigated via first-principles calculations. The uniformity in thickness, large grain sizes, and excellent electrical performance signify the high quality and scalable synthesis of the molybdenum disulphide atomic layers.

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Figure 1: The fundamental growth process of MoS2 films and controlled nucleation.
Figure 2: Characterization of the MoS2 triangular domains.
Figure 3: Grains in single-layered MoS2 films.
Figure 4: Line defects in the single-layered MoS2 films.
Figure 5: Electrical properties of MoS2 films.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Welch Foundation grant C-1716, the NSF grant DMR-0928297, the US Army Research Office MURI grant W911NF-11-1-0362, the US Office of Naval Research MURI grant N000014-09-1-1066, and the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation contract S201006. This research was also supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grant No. DMR-0938330 and a Wigner Fellowship through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy (WZ); Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Shared Research Equipment (ShaRE) User Program (JCI), which is sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy. The computations were performed at the Cyberinfrastructure for Computational Research funded by NSF under Grant CNS-0821727 and the Data Analysis and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure funded by NSF under Grant OCI-0959097.

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Author notes

  1. Sina Najmaei, Zheng Liu and Wu Zhou: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA

    Sina Najmaei, Zheng Liu, Xiaolong Zou, Gang Shi, Sidong Lei, Boris I. Yakobson, Pulickel M. Ajayan & Jun Lou

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA

    Wu Zhou

  3. Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Wu Zhou & Juan-Carlos Idrobo

Authors
  1. Sina Najmaei
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  2. Zheng Liu
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Contributions

J.L., P.M.A., J-C.I. and B.I.Y. proposed and supervised the project. S.N. developed and performed the synthesis experiments. S.N., Z.L., G.S. and S.L. performed the material and device performance characterizations. Z.L. performed the dark-field-TEM imaging experiments. W.Z. performed the STEM characterization and part of the dark-field-TEM imaging experiments. X.Z. performed the grain boundary calculations. All authors helped in analysing and interpreting the data. S.N., Z.L., W.Z., X.Z. and J.L. wrote the paper and all authors discussed and revised the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jun Lou.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Najmaei, S., Liu, Z., Zhou, W. et al. Vapour phase growth and grain boundary structure of molybdenum disulphide atomic layers. Nature Mater 12, 754–759 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3673

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