Uniform nucleation and epitaxy of bilayer molybdenum disulfide on sapphire

Lei Liu; Taotao Li; Liang Ma; Weisheng Li; Si Gao; Wenjie Sun; Ruikang Dong; Xilu Zou; Dongxu Fan; Liangwei Shao; Chenyi Gu; Ningxuan Dai; Zhihao Yu; Xiaoqing Chen; Xuecou Tu; Yuefeng Nie; Peng Wang; Jinlan Wang; Yi Shi; Xinran Wang

doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04523-5

Uniform nucleation and epitaxy of bilayer molybdenum disulfide on sapphire

Nature. 2022 May;605(7908):69-75. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-04523-5. Epub 2022 May 4.

Authors

Lei Liu^#¹, Taotao Li^#², Liang Ma^#³, Weisheng Li^#¹, Si Gao^#⁴, Wenjie Sun^#⁴, Ruikang Dong^#⁵, Xilu Zou¹, Dongxu Fan¹, Liangwei Shao¹, Chenyi Gu⁴, Ningxuan Dai¹, Zhihao Yu⁶, Xiaoqing Chen⁷, Xuecou Tu¹, Yuefeng Nie⁴, Peng Wang⁴, Jinlan Wang⁸, Yi Shi¹, Xinran Wang⁹

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
² National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ttli@nju.edu.cn.
³ School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. liang.ma@seu.edu.cn.
⁴ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
⁵ School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
⁶ College of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Light Field Manipulation and Information Acquisition, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
⁸ School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. jlwang@seu.edu.cn.
⁹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. xrwang@nju.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35508774
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04523-5

Abstract

Two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are of interest for beyond-silicon electronics^1,2. It has been suggested that bilayer TMDs, which combine good electrostatic control, smaller bandgap and higher mobility than monolayers, could potentially provide improvements in the energy-delay product of transistors^3-5. However, despite advances in the growth of monolayer TMDs^6-14, the controlled epitaxial growth of multilayers remains a challenge¹⁵. Here we report the uniform nucleation (>99%) of bilayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) on c-plane sapphire. In particular, we engineer the atomic terrace height on c-plane sapphire to enable an edge-nucleation mechanism and the coalescence of MoS₂ domains into continuous, centimetre-scale films. Fabricated field-effect transistor (FET) devices based on bilayer MoS₂ channels show substantial improvements in mobility (up to 122.6 cm² V^-1 s^-1) and variation compared with FETs based on monolayer films. Furthermore, short-channel FETs exhibit an on-state current of 1.27 mA μm^-1, which exceeds the 2028 roadmap target for high-performance FETs¹⁶.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't