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Epitaxial growth of large area ZrS2 2D semiconductor films on sapphire for optoelectronics

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Abstract

Recently, group-IVB semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) of ZrS2 have attracted significant research interest due to its layered nature, moderate band gap, and extraordinary physical properties. Most device applications require a deposition of high quality large-area uniform ZrS2 single crystalline films, which has not yet been achieved. In this work, for the first time, we demonstrate the epitaxial growth of high quality large-area uniform ZrS2 films on c-plane sapphire substrates by chemical vapor deposition. An atomically sharp interface is observed due to the supercell matching between ZrS2 and sapphire, and their epitaxial relationship is found to be ZrS2 (0001)[101̄0]∥Al2O3 (0001)[112̄0]. The epitaxial ZrS2 film exhibits n-type semiconductor behavior with a room temperature mobility of 2.4 cm2·V−1·s−1, and the optical phonon is the dominant scattering mechanism at room temperature or above. Furthermore, the optoelectronic applications of ZrS2 films are demonstrated by fabricating photodetector devices. The ZrS2 photodetectors exhibit the excellent comprehensive performance, such as a light on/off ratio of 106 and a specific detectivity of 2.6 × 1012 Jones, which are the highest values compared with the photodetectors based on other group-IVB two-dimensional TMDs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61874106) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB43000000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Yan Tian, Yong Cheng, Jidong Huang, Siyu Zhang, Hao Dong, Gaokai Wang, Jingren Chen, Jinliang Wu, Zhigang Yin & Xingwang Zhang

  2. Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yan Tian, Yong Cheng, Jidong Huang, Siyu Zhang, Hao Dong, Gaokai Wang, Jingren Chen, Jinliang Wu, Zhigang Yin & Xingwang Zhang

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  1. Yan Tian
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  2. Yong Cheng
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  4. Siyu Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhigang Yin or Xingwang Zhang.

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Tian, Y., Cheng, Y., Huang, J. et al. Epitaxial growth of large area ZrS2 2D semiconductor films on sapphire for optoelectronics. Nano Res. 15, 6628–6635 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4308-4

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