Controlled Synthesis of MoxW1- xTe2 Atomic Layers with Emergent Quantum States

ACS Nano. 2021 Jul 27;15(7):11526-11534. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.1c01441. Epub 2021 Jun 23.

Abstract

Recently, new states of matter like superconducting or topological quantum states were found in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and manifested themselves in a series of exotic physical behaviors. Such phenomena have been demonstrated to exist in a series of transition metal tellurides including MoTe2, WTe2, and alloyed MoxW1-xTe2. However, the behaviors in the alloy system have been rarely addressed due to their difficulty in obtaining atomic layers with controlled composition, albeit the alloy offers a great platform to tune the quantum states. Here, we report a facile CVD method to synthesize the MoxW1-xTe2 with controllable thickness and chemical composition ratios. The atomic structure of a monolayer MoxW1-xTe2 alloy was experimentally confirmed by scanning transmission electron microscopy. Importantly, two different transport behaviors including superconducting and Weyl semimetal states were observed in Mo-rich Mo0.8W0.2Te2 and W-rich Mo0.2W0.8Te2 samples, respectively. Our results show that the electrical properties of MoxW1-xTe2 can be tuned by controlling the chemical composition, demonstrating our controllable CVD growth method is an efficient strategy to manipulate the physical properties of TMDCs. Meanwhile, it provides a perspective on further comprehension and sheds light on the design of devices with topological multicomponent TMDC materials.

Keywords: Weyl semimetal; chemical vapor deposition; superconductivity; transition metal dichalcogenides; weak antilocalization.