No Arabic abstract
Growing uniform oxides with various thickness on TMDs is one of the biggest challenges to integrate TMDs into complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic circuits. Here, we report a layer-by-layer oxidation of atomically thin MoTe2 flakes via ozone (O3) exposure. The thickness of MoOx oxide film could be tuning with atomic-level accuracy simply by varying O3 exposure time. Additionally, MoOx-covered MoTe2 shows a hole-dominated transport behavior. Our findings point to a simple and effective strategy for growing homogenous surface oxide film on MoTe2, which is promising for several purposes in metal-oxide-semiconductor transistor, ranging from surface passivation to dielectric layers.
We report the structural and electrical characterization of tungsten oxides formed by illuminating multi-layer tungsten diselenide (WSe2) nanosheets with an intense laser beam in the ambient environment. A noninvasive microwave impedance microscope (MIM) was used to perform electrical imaging of the samples. The local conductivity ~100 S/m of the oxidized product, measured by the MIM and conventional transport experiments, is much higher than that of the pristine WSe2, suggesting the formation of sub-stoichiometric WO3-x polycrystals with n-type carriers. With further efforts to improve the conductivity of the oxides, the laser-assisted oxidation process may be useful for patterning conductive features on WSe2 or forming electrical contacts to various transition metal dichalcogenides.
Chemical modification, such as intercalation or doping of novel materials is of great importance for exploratory material science and applications in various fields of physics and chemistry. In the present work, we report the systematic intercalation of chemically exfoliated few-layer graphene with potassium while monitoring the sample resistance using microwave conductivity. We find that the conductivity of the samples increases by about an order of magnitude upon potassium exposure. The increased of number of charge carriers deduced from the ESR intensity also reflects this increment. The doped phases exhibit two asymmetric Dysonian lines in ESR, a usual sign of the presence of mobile charge carriers. The width of the broader component increases with the doping steps, however, the narrow components seem to have a constant line width.
The puckered surface of black phosphorus represents an ideal substrate for an unconventional arrangement of physisorbed species and the resulting specific two-dimensional chemistry of this system. This opens the way to investigate the chemical and physical properties of locally confined areas of black phosphorus without the necessity for further physical downscaling of the material. We have evaporated TCNQ on top of black phosphorus under over-saturation non-equilibrium conditions in vacuum. The evolution of linear density and height of droplets formed through oxidation during exposure to air was studied time-dependently by scanning-force microscopy. Our study suggests that the TCNQ molecules spontaneously arrange in a thin layer of the order of a few nm height, which, however, is fragmented with a periodicity of about 100 nm. It is shown that within the confined space separating the layer fragments the chemical dynamics of the oxidation process is remarkably different than on a bare black phosphorus surface.
Graphene has shown great application opportunities in future nanoelectronic devices due to its outstanding electronic properties. Moreover, its impressive optical properties have been attracting the interest of researchers, and, recently, the photovoltaic effects of a heterojunction structure embedded with few layer graphene (FLG) have been demonstrated. Here, we report the photovoltaic response of graphene-semiconductor junctions and the controlled open-circuit voltage (Voc) with varying numbers of graphene layers. After unavoidably adsorbed contaminants were removed from the FLGs, by means of in situ annealing, prepared by layer-by-layer transfer of the chemically grown graphene layer, the work functions of FLGs showed a sequential increase as the graphene layers increase, despite of random interlayer-stacking, resulting in the modulation of photovoltaic behaviors of FLGs/Si interfaces. The surface photovoltaic effects observed here show an electronic realignment in the depth direction in the FLG heterojunction systems, indicating future potential toward solar devices utilizing the excellent transparency and flexibility of FLG.
The millimeter sized monolayer and bilayer 2H-MoTe2 single crystal samples are prepared by a new mechanical exfoliation method. Based on such high-quality samples, we report the first direct electronic structure study on them, using standard high resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). A direct band gap of 0.924eV is found at K in the rubidium-doped monolayer MoTe2. Similar valence band alignment is also observed in bilayer MoTe2,supporting an assumption of a analogous direct gap semiconductor on it. Our measurements indicate a rather large band splitting of 212meV at the valence band maximum (VBM) in monolayer MoTe2, and the splitting is systematically enlarged with layer stacking, from monolayer to bilayer and to bulk. Meanwhile, our PBE band calculation on these materials show excellent agreement with ARPES results. Some fundamental electronic parameters are derived from the experimental and calculated electronic structures. Our findings lay a foundation for further application-related study on monolayer and bilayer MoTe2.