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Highly-anisotropic optical and electrical properties in layered SnSe

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Abstract

Anisotropic materials are of considerable interest because of their unique combination of polarization- or direction-dependent electrical, optical, and thermoelectric properties. Low-symmetry two-dimensional (2D) materials formed by van der Waals stacking of covalently bonded atomic layers are inherently anisotropic. Layered SnSe exhibits a low degree of lattice symmetry, with a distorted NaCl structure and an in-plane anisotropy. Here we report a systematic study of the in-plane anisotropic properties in layered SnSe, using angle-resolved Raman scattering, optical absorption, and electrical transport studies. The optical and electrical characterization was direction-dependent, and successfully identified the crystalline orientation in the layered SnSe. Furthermore, the dependence of Raman-intensity anisotropy on the SnSe flake thickness and the excitation wavelength were investigated by both experiments and theoretical calculations. Finally, the electrical transport studies demonstrated that few-layer SnSe field-effect transistors (FETs) have a large anisotropic ratio of carrier mobility (∼5.8) between the armchair and zigzag directions, which is a record high value reported for 2D anisotropic materials. The highly-anisotropic properties of layered SnSe indicate considerable promise for anisotropic optics, electronics, and optoelectronics.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the support from National Science Foundation through the grant DMR1508144. S. X. Y. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51602014) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. YWF-17-BJ-Y-112). C. B. J. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 51331001). S. H. W. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (No. 51672023). We thank Prof. Dehui Li for discussing the experiments and related data.

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Author notes

  1. Shengxue Yang, Yuan Liu, and Minghui Wu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Shengxue Yang, Zhaoyang Lin, Yiliu Wang & Xiangfeng Duan

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Shengxue Yang, Li-Dong Zhao & Chengbao Jiang

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Yuan Liu, Hung-chieh Cheng & Yu Huang

  4. Department of Physics, South University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, 518005, China

    Minghui Wu & Li Huang

  5. Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing, 100094, China

    Su-Huai Wei

  6. California Nanosystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Yu Huang & Xiangfeng Duan

Authors
  1. Shengxue Yang
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  2. Yuan Liu
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  3. Minghui Wu
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  10. Li Huang
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Correspondence to Shengxue Yang or Xiangfeng Duan.

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Yang, S., Liu, Y., Wu, M. et al. Highly-anisotropic optical and electrical properties in layered SnSe. Nano Res. 11, 554–564 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1712-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1712-2

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