Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

An innovative way of etching MoS2: Characterization and mechanistic investigation

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Nano Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We report a systematic study of the etching of MoS2 crystals by using XeF2 as a gaseous reactant. By controlling the etching process, monolayer MoS2 with uniform morphology can be obtained. The Raman and photoluminescence spectra of the resulting material were similar to those of exfoliated MoS2. Utilizing this strategy, different patterns such as a Hall bar structure and a hexagonal array can be realized. Furthermore, the etching mechanism was studied by introducing graphene as an etching mask. We believe our technique opens an easy and controllable way of etching MoS2, which can be used to fabricate complex nanostructures, such as nanoribbons, quantum dots, and transistor structures. This etching process using XeF2 can also be extended to other interesting two-dimensional crystals.

Graphical abstract

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Coleman, J. N.; Lotya, M.; O’Neill, A.; Bergin, S. D.; King, P. J.; Khan, U.; Young, K.; Gaucher, A.; De, S.; Smith, R. J. et al. Two-dimensional nanosheets produced by liquid exfoliation of layered materials. Science 2011, 331, 568–571.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Steinberg, H.; Gardner, D. R.; Lee, Y. S.; Jarillo-Herrero, P. Surface state transport and ambipolar electric field effect in Bi2Se3 nanodevices. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 5032–5036.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Ramakrishna Matte, H. S. S.; Gomathi, A.; Manna, A. K.; Late, D. J.; Datta, R.; Pati, S. K.; Rao, C. N. R. MoS2 and WS2 analogues of graphene. Angew. Chem. 2010, 122, 4153–4156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Teweldebrhan, D.; Goyal, V.; Balandin, A. A. Exfoliation and characterization of bismuth telluride atomic quintuples and quasi-two-dimensional crystals. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 1209–1218.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Lee, C.; Wei, X.; Kysar, J. W.; Hone, J. Measurement of the elastic properties and intrinsic strength of monolayer graphene. Science 2008, 321, 385–388.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Ni, G. X.; Zheng, Y.; Bae, S.; Tan, C. Y.; Kahya, O.; Wu, J.; Hong, B. H.; Yao, K.; Özyilmaz, B. Graphene-ferroelectric hybrid structure for flexible transparent electrodes. ACS Nano 2012, 6, 3935–3942.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K.; Morozov, S. V.; Jiang, D.; Katsnelson, M. I.; Grigorieva, I. V.; Dubonos, S. V.; Firsov, A. A. Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene. Nature 2005, 438, 197–200.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Yang, R.; Zhang, L. C.; Wang, Y.; Shi, Z. W.; Shi, D. X.; Gao, H. J.; Wang, E. G.; Zhang, G. Y. An anisotropic etching effect in the graphene basal plane. Adv. Mater. 2010, 22, 4014–4019.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Castro Neto, A. H.; Guinea, F.; Peres, N. M. R.; Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K. The electronic properties of graphene. Rev. Mod. Phys. 2009, 81, 109–162.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Shi, Z. W.; Yang, R.; Zhang, L. C.; Wang, Y.; Liu, D. H.; Shi, D. X.; Wang, E. G.; Zhang, G. Y. Patterning graphene with zigzag edges by self-aligned anisotropic etching. Adv. Mater. 2011, 23, 3061–3065.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Lu, Y. H.; Feng, Y. P. Band-gap engineering with hybrid graphane-graphene nanoribbons. J. Phys. Chem. C 2009, 113, 20841–20844.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Balog, R.; Jørgensen, B.; Nilsson, L.; Andersen, M.; Rienks, E.; Bianchi, M.; Fanetti, M.; Lægsgaard, E.; Baraldi, A.; Lizzit, S. et al. Bandgap opening in graphene induced by patterned hydrogen adsorption. Nat. Mater. 2010, 9, 315–319.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Jiao, L. Y.; Zhang, L.; Wang, X. R.; Diankov, G.; Dai, H. J. Narrow graphene nanoribbons from carbon nanotubes. Nature 2009, 458, 877–880.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Mak, K. F.; Lee, C.; Hone, J.; Shan, J.; Heinz, T. F. Atomically thin MoS2: A new direct-gap semiconductor. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2010, 105, 136805.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kuc, A.; Zibouche, N.; Heine, T. Influence of quantum confinement on the electronic structure of the transition metal sulfide TS2. Phys. Rev. B 2011, 83, 245213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Korn, T.; Heydrich, S.; Hirmer, M.; Schmutzler, J.; Schüller, C. Low-temperature photocarrier dynamics in monolayer MoS2. Appl. Phys. Lett. 2011, 99, 102109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Radisavljevic, B.; Radenovic, A.; Brivio, J.; Giacometti, V.; Kis, A. Single-layer MoS2 transistors. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2011, 6, 147–150.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Bertolazzi, S.; Brivio, J.; Kis, A. Stretching and breaking of ultrathin MoS2. ACS Nano 2011, 5, 9703–9709.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Castellanos-Gomez, A.; Poot, M.; Steele, G. A.; van der Zant, H. S. J.; Agraït, N.; Rubio-Bollinger, G. Elastic properties of freely suspended MoS2 nanosheets. Adv. Mater. 2012, 24, 772–775.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Fortin, E.; Sears, W. M. Photovoltaic effect and optical absorption in MoS2. J. Phys. Chem. Solids 1982, 43, 881–884.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Chen, Z. B.; Cummins, D.; Reinecke, B. N.; Clark, E.; Sunkara, M. K.; Jaramillo, T. F. Core-shell MoO3-MoS2 nanowires for hydrogen evolution: A functional design for electrocatalytic materials. Nano Lett. 2011, 11, 4168–4175.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Miyake, K.; Shigekawa, H. Surface structures of layered compounds treated with alkali-metal hydroxide solutions studied by scanning tunneling microscopy. Synth. Met. 1995, 71, 1753–1754.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Xiao, D.; Liu, G. B.; Feng, W. X.; Xu, X. D.; Yao, W. Coupled spin and valley physics in monolayers of MoS2 and other group-VI dichalcogenides. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2012, 108, 196802.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Zomer, P. J.; Dash, S. P.; Tombros, N.; van Wees, B. J. A transfer technique for high mobility graphene devices on commercially available hexagonal boron nitride. Appl. Phys. Lett. 2011, 99, 232104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Robinson, J. T.; Burgess, J. S.; Junkermeier, C. E.; Badescu, S. C.; Reinecke, T. L.; Perkins, F. K.; Zalalutdniov, M. K.; Baldwin, J. W.; Culbertson, J. C.; Sheehan, P. E. et al. Properties of fluorinated graphene films. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 3001–3005.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Withers, F.; Dubois, M.; Savchenko, A. K. Electron properties of fluorinated single-layer graphene transistors. Phys. Rev. B 2010, 82, 073403.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Ribas, M. A.; Singh, A. K.; Sorokin, P. B.; Yakobson, B. I. Patterning nanoroads and quantum dots on fluorinated graphene. Nano Res. 2011, 4, 143–152.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Castellanos-Gomez, A.; Barkelid, M.; Goossens, A. M.; Calado, V. E.; van der Zant, H. S. J.; Steele, G. A. Laser-thinning of MoS2: On demand generation of a single-layer semiconductor. Nano Lett. 2012, 12, 3187–3192.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Ferrari, A. C.; Meyer, J. C.; Scardaci, V.; Casiraghi, C.; Lazzeri, M.; Mauri, F.; Piscanec, S.; Jiang, D.; Novoselov, K. S.; Roth, S. et al. Raman spectrum of graphene and graphene layers. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2006, 97, 187401.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Gorbachev, R. V.; Riaz, I.; Nair, R. R.; Jalil, R.; Britnell, L.; Belle, B. D.; Hill, E. W.; Novoselov, K. S.; Watanabe, K.; Taniguchi, T. et al. Hunting for monolayer boron nitride: Optical and Raman signatures. Small 2011, 7, 465–468.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Frey, G. L.; Tenne, R.; Matthews, M. J.; Dresselhaus, M. S.; Dresselhaus, G. Raman and resonance Raman investigation of MoS2 nanoparticles. Phys. Rev. B 1999, 60, 2883–2892.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Calizo, I.; Balandin, A. A.; Bao, W.; Miao, F.; Lau, C. N. Temperature dependence of the Raman spectra of graphene and graphene multilayers. Nano Lett. 2007, 7, 2645–2649.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Lee, C.; Yan, H.; Brus, L. E.; Heinz, T. F.; Hone, J.; Ryu, S. Anomalous lattice vibrations of single and few-layer MoS2. ACS Nano 2010, 4, 2695–2700.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Splendiani, A.; Sun, L.; Zhang, Y. B.; Li, T.; Kim, J.; Chim, C. Y.; Galli, G.; Wang, F. Emerging photoluminescence in monolayer MoS2. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 1271–1275.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Coehoorn, R.; Haas, C.; de Groot, R. A. Electronic structure of MoSe2, MoS2, and WSe2. II. The nature of the optical band gaps. Phys. Rev. B 1987, 35, 6203–6306.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Ni, G. X.; Zheng, Y.; Bae, S.; Kim, H. R.; Pachoud, A.; Kim, Y. S.; Tan, C. L.; Im, D.; Ahn, J. H.; Hong, B. H.; Özyilmaz, B. Quasi-periodic nanoripples in graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition and its impact on charge transport. ACS Nano 2012, 6, 1158–1164.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Silvestrov, P. G.; Efetov, K. B. Quantum dots in graphene. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2007, 98, 016802.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Ataca, C.; Sahin, H.; Akturk, E.; Ciraci, S. Mechanical and electronic properties of MoS2 nanoribbons and their defects. J. Phys. Chem. C 2011, 115, 3934–3941.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Li, Y. F.; Zhou, Z.; Zhang, S. B.; Chen, Z. F. MoS2 nanoribbons: High stability and unusual electronic and magnetic properties. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 16739–16744.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yuan Huang & Chengmin Shen

  2. Department of Physics, 2 Science Drive 3, National University of Singapore, 117542, Singapore, Singapore

    Yuan Huang, Jing Wu, Xiangfan Xu, Yuda Ho, Guangxin Ni, Qiang Zou, Gavin Kok Wai Koon, Weijie Zhao, A. H. Castro Neto, Goki Eda & Barbaros Özyilmaz

  3. Graphene Research Centre, 6 Science Drive 2, National University of Singapore, 117542, Singapore, Singapore

    Yuan Huang, Jing Wu, Xiangfan Xu, Yuda Ho, Guangxin Ni, Qiang Zou, Gavin Kok Wai Koon, Weijie Zhao, A. H. Castro Neto, Goki Eda & Barbaros Özyilmaz

  4. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, 6 Science Drive 2, 117546, Singapore, Singapore

    Weijie Zhao & Goki Eda

  5. Nanocore, 4 Engineering Drive 3, National University of Singapore, 117576, Singapore, Singapore

    Barbaros Özyilmaz

  6. NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering (NGS), Centre for Life Sciences (CeLS), 28 Medical Drive, 117456, Singapore, Singapore

    A. H. Castro Neto & Barbaros Özyilmaz

Authors
  1. Yuan Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jing Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Xiangfan Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yuda Ho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Guangxin Ni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Qiang Zou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Gavin Kok Wai Koon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Weijie Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. A. H. Castro Neto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Goki Eda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Chengmin Shen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Barbaros Özyilmaz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbaros Özyilmaz.

Additional information

These two authors made an equal contribution to the work.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Huang, Y., Wu, J., Xu, X. et al. An innovative way of etching MoS2: Characterization and mechanistic investigation. Nano Res. 6, 200–207 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-013-0296-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-013-0296-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation