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Atomic mechanism of the semiconducting-to-metallic phase transition in single-layered MoS2

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 391–396 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Phase transitions can be used to alter the properties of a material without adding any additional atoms and are therefore of significant technological value. In a solid, phase transitions involve collective atomic displacements, but such atomic processes have so far only been investigated using macroscopic approaches. Here, we show that in situ scanning transmission electron microscopy can be used to follow the structural transformation between semiconducting (2H) and metallic (1T) phases in single-layered MoS2, with atomic resolution. The 2H/1T phase transition involves gliding atomic planes of sulphur and/or molybdenum and requires an intermediate phase (α-phase) as a precursor. The migration of two kinds of boundaries (β- and γ-boundaries) is also found to be responsible for the growth of the second phase. Furthermore, we show that areas of the 1T phase can be controllably grown in a layer of the 2H phase using an electron beam.

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Figure 1: Polymorphs of single-layered MoS2.
Figure 2: Atomic movements during 2H → 1T phase transformation in single-layered MoS2 at T = 600 °C.
Figure 3: Three elemental steps responsible for phase transitions in single-layered MoS2 (T = 600 °C).
Figure 4: Time dependence of phase transformation process and fabrication of nanodevices in single-layered MoS2.

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Acknowledgements

The authors from AIST acknowledge support from the JST Research Acceleration Programme. D.O.D. and Y.S.H. acknowledge the support of the National Science Council of Taiwan (projects NSC 100-2112-M-011-001-MY3 and NSC 101-2811-M-011-002).

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Author notes

  1. Dumitru O. Dumcenco

    Present address: Present address: Electrical Engineering Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, 305-8565, Japan

    Yung-Chang Lin & Kazu Suenaga

  2. Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan

    Dumitru O. Dumcenco & Ying-Sheng Huang

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  1. Yung-Chang Lin
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  3. Ying-Sheng Huang
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Contributions

Y.C.L. performed experiments and analysed data. D.O.D. and Y.S.H. grew materials. K.S. and Y.C.L. designed experiments. Y.C.L. and K.S. co-wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kazu Suenaga.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lin, YC., Dumcenco, D., Huang, YS. et al. Atomic mechanism of the semiconducting-to-metallic phase transition in single-layered MoS2. Nature Nanotech 9, 391–396 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.64

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