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Atomically engineering metal vacancies in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

Nature Synthesis (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Scanning probe microscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) are powerful tools to trigger atomic-scale motions, pattern atomic defects and lead to anomalous quantum phenomena in functional materials. However, these techniques have primarily manipulated surface atoms or atoms located at the beam exit plane, leaving buried atoms, which govern exotic quantum phenomena, largely unaffected. Here we propose an electron-beam-triggered chemical etching approach to engineer shielded metal atoms sandwiched between chalcogen layers in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC). Various metal vacancies \(({{{\mathrm{V}}}}_{{{\rm{MX}}}_{{n}}},\,{n}=0{-}6)\) have been fabricated via atomically focused electron beam in STEM. The parent TMDC surface was modified with surfactants, facilitating the ejection of sandwiched metal vacancies via charge transfer effect. In situ sequential STEM imaging corroborated that a combined chemical-induced knock-on effect and chalcogen vacancy-assisted metal diffusion process result in atom-by-atom vacancy formation. This approach is validated in 16 different TMDCs. The presence of metal vacancies strongly modified their magnetic and electronic properties, correlated with the unpaired chalcogen p and metal d electrons surrounding vacancies and adjacent distortions. These findings show a generic approach for engineering interior metal atoms with atomic precision, creating opportunities to exploit quantum phenomena at the atomic scale.

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Fig. 1: Forming metal vacancies via chemical-induced knock-on effect.
Fig. 2: Atomic structures and associated dynamics of metal vacancies.
Fig. 3: Generic fabrication of metal vacancies in an atlas of monolayer TMDCs.
Fig. 4: DFT-calculated electronic properties of metal vacancy complexes in MoSe2 monolayer.

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All data are available in the main text or Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

X.Z. thanks the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no.52273279), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (no. Z220020) and the open research fund of Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (grant no. 2023SLABFN26). J.Q. thanks Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China (grant no. 2018YFE0202700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 11974422, 12204534 and 62171035) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDB30000000). The authors acknowledge the Electron Microscopy Laboratory of Peking University, China for the use of Cs-corrected Nion U-HERMES200 scanning transmission electron microscopy.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xiaocang Han, Mengmeng Niu, Yan Luo.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Xiaocang Han, Jin Zhang & Xiaoxu Zhao

  2. MIIT Key Laboratory for Low-Dimensional Quantum Structure and Devices & Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Mengmeng Niu, Xu Wu, Yeliang Wang & Jingsi Qiao

  3. Frontiers Science Center for Flexible Electronics and Institute of Flexible Electronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

    Yan Luo

  4. College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Runlai Li

  5. NUS Centre for Bioimaging Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Jiadong Dan

  6. DP Technology, Beijing, China

    Yanhui Hong

  7. SSPA ‘Scientific and Practical Materials Research Centre of NAS of Belarus’, Minsk, Belarus

    Alex V. Trukhanov

  8. Beijing Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Functional Materials & Micro-Nano Devices, Department of Physics, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Wei Ji

  9. Wangxuan Institute of Computer Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Jiahuan Zhou

  10. AI for Science Institute, Beijing, China

    Xiaoxu Zhao

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Contributions

X.Z. and J. Zhang conceived and designed the experiments. X.H. and Y.L. synthesized materials and performed the STEM characterizations. M.N. and J.Q. built the theoretical model and performed DFT calculations. X.H., M.N. and Y.L. conducted all analysis under the supervision of J.Q., J. Zhang and X.Z. R.L., J.D., X.W., A.V.T., W.J., Y.W. and J. Zhou contributed to the sample measurements and mechanism understanding. Y.H. conducted deep deep-learning experiment. X.H., M.N., J.Q. and X.Z. co-wrote the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and contributed to preparing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jingsi Qiao, Jin Zhang or Xiaoxu Zhao.

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Nature Synthesis thanks Marijn van Huis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary handling editor: Alexandra Groves, in collaboration with the Nature Synthesis team.

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Spin density and structures of metal vacancy in TMDCs.

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Han, X., Niu, M., Luo, Y. et al. Atomically engineering metal vacancies in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. Nat. Synth (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-024-00501-z

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