Stable Sulfuric Vapor Transport and Liquid Sulfur Growth on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Dmitriy A Chareev; Md Ezaz Hasan Khan; Debjani Karmakar; Aleksey N Nekrasov; Maximilian S Nickolsky; Olle Eriksson; Anna Delin; Alexander N Vasiliev; Mahmoud Abdel-Hafiez

doi:10.1021/acs.cgd.2c01318

Stable Sulfuric Vapor Transport and Liquid Sulfur Growth on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Cryst Growth Des. 2023 Mar 21;23(4):2287-2294. doi: 10.1021/acs.cgd.2c01318. eCollection 2023 Apr 5.

Authors

Dmitriy A Chareev^{1

2

3}, Md Ezaz Hasan Khan⁴, Debjani Karmakar⁵, Aleksey N Nekrasov¹, Maximilian S Nickolsky⁶, Olle Eriksson^{5

7}, Anna Delin^{8

9}, Alexander N Vasiliev^{10

11}, Mahmoud Abdel-Hafiez^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Experimental Mineralogy (IEM RAS), 142432 Chernogolovka, Moscow Region, Russia.
² Kazan Federal University, 18 Kremlyovskaya St., 420008 Kazan, Russia.
³ Ural Federal University, 620002 Ekaterinburg, Russia.
⁴ University of Doha for Science and Technology, 24449 Doha, P.O. Box 24449, Qatar.
⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden.
⁶ Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits (IGEM RAS), 35, Staromonetnyi per., 119017 Moscow, Russia.
⁷ School of Science and Technology, Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden.
⁸ Department of Applied Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
⁹ Swedish e-Science Research Center, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-10044 Stockholm, Sweden.
¹⁰ Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
¹¹ National University of Science and Technology "MISiS", 119049 Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are an emergent class of low-dimensional materials with growing applications in the field of nanoelectronics. However, efficient methods for synthesizing large monocrystals of these systems are still lacking. Here, we describe an efficient synthetic route for a large number of TMDs that were obtained in quartz glass ampoules by sulfuric vapor transport and liquid sulfur. Unlike the sublimation technique, the metal enters the gas phase in the form of molecules, hence containing a greater amount of sulfur than the growing crystal. We have investigated the physical properties for a selection of these crystals and compared them to state-of-the-art findings reported in the literature. The acquired electronic properties features demonstrate the overall high quality of single crystals grown in this work as exemplified by CoS₂, ReS₂, NbS₂, and TaS₂. This new approach to synthesize high-quality TMD single crystals can alleviate many material quality concerns and is suitable for emerging electronic devices.