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Epitaxial growth of large-area and highly crystalline anisotropic ReSe2 atomic layer

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Abstract

The anisotropic two-dimensional (2D) layered material rhenium disulfide (ReSe2) has attracted considerable attention because of its unusual properties and promising applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices. However, because of its low lattice symmetry and interlayer decoupling, anisotropic growth and out-of-plane growth occur easily, yielding thick flakes, dendritic structure, or flower-like structure. In this study, we demonstrated a bottom-up method for the controlled and scalable synthesis of ReSe2 by van der Waals epitaxy. To achieve controllable growth, a micro-reactor with a confined reaction space was constructed by stacking two mica substrates in the chemical vapor deposition system. Within the confined reaction space, the nucleation density and growth rate of ReSe2 were significantly reduced, favoring the large-area synthesis of ReSe2 with a uniform monolayer thickness. The morphological evolution of ReSe2 with growth temperature indicated that the anisotropic growth was suppressed at a low growth temperature (<600 °C). Field-effect transistors employing the grown ReSe2 exhibited p-type conduction with a current ON/OFF ratio up to 105 and a hole carrier mobility of 0.98 cm2/(V·s). Furthermore, the ReSe2 device exhibited an outstanding photoresponse to near-infrared light, with responsivity up to 8.4 and 5.1 A/W for 850- and 940-nm light, respectively. This work not only promotes the large-scale application of ReSe2 in high-performance electronic devices but also clarifies the growth mechanism of low-lattice symmetry 2D materials.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the insightful suggestions and comments from Dr. S. C. Zhang and N. N. Mao at Peking University. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51502167 and 21473110), and the fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. GK201502003), L. Z. and J. K. acknowledge the funding by the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials under NSF (No. DMR-1231319).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Advanced Energy Devices, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710119, China

    Fangfang Cui, Xiaobo Li, Dongyan Liu, Kaiqiang Liu, Xuexia He, Xing Liang, Shengzhong Liu, Zhibin Lei, Zonghuai Liu & Hua Xu

  2. Center for Nanochemistry, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Qingliang Feng, Jianbo Yin, Hailin Peng & Jin Zhang

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Lin Zhou & Jing Kong

  4. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710119, China

    Kaiqiang Liu

  5. Shaanxi Engineering Lab for Advanced Energy Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710119, China

    Fangfang Cui, Xiaobo Li, Dongyan Liu, Kaiqiang Liu, Xuexia He, Xing Liang, Shengzhong Liu, Zhibin Lei, Zonghuai Liu & Hua Xu

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  1. Fangfang Cui
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Correspondence to Hua Xu.

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Cui, F., Li, X., Feng, Q. et al. Epitaxial growth of large-area and highly crystalline anisotropic ReSe2 atomic layer. Nano Res. 10, 2732–2742 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1477-7

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