Epitaxial Growth of Wafer-scale Molybdenum Disulfide Semiconductor Single Crystals on Sapphire

Overview

Journal Nat Nanotechnol

Specialty Biotechnology

Date 2021 Sep 3

PMID 34475559

Citations 85

Authors

Taotao Li

Wei Guo

Liang Ma

Weisheng Li

Zhihao Yu

Zhen Han

Si Gao

Lei Liu

Dongxu Fan

Zixuan Wang

Yang Yang

Weiyi Lin

Zhongzhong Luo

Xiaoqing Chen

Ningxuan Dai

Xuecou Tu

Danfeng Pan

Yagang Yao

Peng Wang

Yuefeng Nie

Jinlan Wang

Yi Shi

Xinran Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors, in particular transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), have attracted great interest in extending Moore's law beyond silicon. However, despite extensive efforts, the growth of wafer-scale TMDC single crystals on scalable and industry-compatible substrates has not been well demonstrated. Here we demonstrate the epitaxial growth of 2 inch (~50 mm) monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS) single crystals on a C-plane sapphire. We designed the miscut orientation towards the A axis (C/A) of sapphire, which is perpendicular to the standard substrates. Although the change of miscut orientation does not affect the epitaxial relationship, the resulting step edges break the degeneracy of nucleation energy for the antiparallel MoS domains and lead to more than a 99% unidirectional alignment. A set of microscopies, spectroscopies and electrical measurements consistently showed that the MoS is single crystalline and has an excellent wafer-scale uniformity. We fabricated field-effect transistors and obtained a mobility of 102.6 cm V s and a saturation current of 450 μA μm, which are among the highest for monolayer MoS. A statistical analysis of 160 field-effect transistors over a centimetre scale showed a >94% device yield and a 15% variation in mobility. We further demonstrated the single-crystalline MoSe on C/A sapphire. Our method offers a general and scalable route to produce TMDC single crystals towards future electronics.

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