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Direct synthesis of moiré superlattice through chemical vapor deposition growth of monolayer WS2 on plasma-treated HOPG

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Abstract

Vertical van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures composed of two-dimensional (2D) layered materials have recently attracted substantial interests due to their unique properties. However, the direct synthesis of moiré superlattice remains a great challenge due to the difficulties in heterogeneous nucleation on smooth vdW surfaces. Here, we report a controllable chemical vapor deposition growth of complete monolayer WS2 on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) substrates through the plasma pretreatment. The results show that the morphologies of the grown WS2 have a strong dependence on the plasma parameters, including gas composition, source power, and treatment time. It is found that the surface C-C bonds are broken in the plasma pretreated HOPG, and the formed small clusters can act as the nucleation sites for the subsequent growth of WS2. Moreover, the height of clusters dominates the growth mode of WS2 islands. A transition from a 2D mode to three-dimensional (3D) growth mode occurs when the height is higher than the interlayer spacing of the heterostructure. Besides, diverse moiré superlattices with different twist angles for WS2/HOPG heterostructures are observed, and the formation mechanism is further analyzed by first-principles calculations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (Nos. 61974123, 61874092, and 61804129), the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (No. 62022068), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 20720190055 and 20720190058).

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  1. Xiaowen Zhou and Zongnan Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Engineering Research Center for Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Materials and Devices at Education Ministry, OSED, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials and Applications, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Xiaowen Zhou, Zongnan Zhang, Xinlong Zeng, Yaping Wu, Feiya Xu, Chunmiao Zhang, Xu Li, Zhiming Wu & Junyong Kang

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  1. Xiaowen Zhou
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  2. Zongnan Zhang
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Correspondence to Yaping Wu, Xu Li or Zhiming Wu.

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Zhou, X., Zhang, Z., Zeng, X. et al. Direct synthesis of moiré superlattice through chemical vapor deposition growth of monolayer WS2 on plasma-treated HOPG. Nano Res. 15, 8587–8594 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4487-z

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