Synthesis of In-Plane Artificial Lattices of Monolayer Multijunctions

Abstract

Recently, monolayers of van der Waals materials, including transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), are considered ideal building blocks for constructing 2D artificial lattices and heterostructures. Heterostructures with multijunctions of more than two monolayer TMDs are intriguing for exploring new physics and materials properties. Obtaining in-plane heterojunctions of monolayer TMDs with atomically sharp interfaces is very significant for fundamental research and applications. Currently, multistep synthesis for more than two monolayer TMDs remains a challenge because decomposition or compositional alloying is thermodynamically favored at the high growth temperature. Here, a multistep chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of the in-plane multijunctions of monolayer TMDs is presented. A low growth temperature synthesis is developed to avoid compositional fluctuations of as-grown TMDs, defects formations, and interfacial alloying for high heterointerface quality and thermal stability of monolayer TMDs. With optimized parameters, atomically sharp interfaces are successfully achieved in the synthesis of in-plane artificial lattices of the WS₂/WSe₂/MoS₂ at reduced growth temperatures. Growth behaviors as well as the heterointerface quality are carefully studied in varying growth parameters. Highly oriented strain patterns are found in the second harmonic generation imaging of the TMD multijunctions, suggesting that the in-plane heteroepitaxial growth may induce distortion for unique material symmetry.

In-plane multijunctions of the WS₂/WSe₂/MoS₂ artificial 2D lattices with atomically sharp heterointerfaces are realized by multistep chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis. Heterointerface quality and thermal stability of each constituted transition metal dichalcogenides are studied with controlled experiments. Unique symmetry induced by in-plane heteroepitaxial growth is identified with second harmonic generation, which opens a new route toward novel physical properties of optical nonlinearity.

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