Since the discovery of mechanically exfoliated graphene in 2004, research on ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials has grown exponentially in the fields of condensed matter physics, material science, chemistry, and nanotechnology. Highlighting their compelling physical, chemical, electronic, and optical properties, as well as their various potential applications, in this Review, we summarize the state-of-art progress on the ultrathin 2D nanomaterials with a particular emphasis on their recent advances. First, we introduce the unique advances on ultrathin 2D nanomaterials, followed by the description of their composition and crystal structures. The assortments of their synthetic methods are then summarized, including insights on their advantages and limitations, alongside some recommendations on suitable characterization techniques. We also discuss in detail the utilization of these ultrathin 2D nanomaterials for wide ranges of potential applications among the electronics/optoelectronics, electrocat...

Recent Advances in Ultrathin Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials

Graphene is very popular because of its many fascinating properties, but its lack of an electronic bandgap has stimulated the search for 2D materials with semiconducting character. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), which are semiconductors of the type MX2, where M is a transition metal atom (such as Mo or W) and X is a chalcogen atom (such as S, Se or Te), provide a promising alternative. Because of its robustness, MoS2 is the most studied material in this family. TMDCs exhibit a unique combination of atomic-scale thickness, direct bandgap, strong spin–orbit coupling and favourable electronic and mechanical properties, which make them interesting for fundamental studies and for applications in high-end electronics, spintronics, optoelectronics, energy harvesting, flexible electronics, DNA sequencing and personalized medicine. In this Review, the methods used to synthesize TMDCs are examined and their properties are discussed, with particular attention to their charge density wave, superconductive and topological phases. The use of TMCDs in nanoelectronic devices is also explored, along with strategies to improve charge carrier mobility, high frequency operation and the use of strain engineering to tailor their properties. Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) exhibit attractive electronic and mechanical properties. In this Review, the charge density wave, superconductive and topological phases of TMCDs are discussed, along with their synthesis and applications in devices with enhanced mobility and with the use of strain engineering to improve their properties.

2D transition metal dichalcogenides

The isolation of graphene in 2004 from graphite was a defining moment for the “birth” of a field: two-dimensional (2D) materials In recent years, there has been a rapidly increasing number of papers focusing on non-graphene layered materials, including transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), because of the new properties and applications that emerge upon 2D confinement Here, we review significant recent advances and important new developments in 2D materials “beyond graphene” We provide insight into the theoretical modeling and understanding of the van der Waals (vdW) forces that hold together the 2D layers in bulk solids, as well as their excitonic properties and growth morphologies Additionally, we highlight recent breakthroughs in TMD synthesis and characterization and discuss the newest families of 2D materials, including monoelement 2D materials (ie, silicene, phosphorene, etc) and transition metal carbide- and carbon nitride-based MXenes We then discuss the doping and functionalization of 2

Recent Advances in Two-Dimensional Materials beyond Graphene

Two-dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) have been a central focus of materials research since the discovery of graphene just over a decade ago. Each layer in 2DLMs consists of a covalently bonded, dangling-bond-free lattice and is weakly bound to neighbouring layers by van der Waals interactions. This makes it feasible to isolate, mix and match highly disparate atomic layers to create a wide range of van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) without the constraints of lattice matching and processing compatibility. Exploiting the novel properties in these vdWHs with diverse layering of metals, semiconductors or insulators, new designs of electronic devices emerge, including tunnelling transistors, barristors and flexible electronics, as well as optoelectronic devices, including photodetectors, photovoltaics and light-emitting devices with unprecedented characteristics or unique functionalities. We review the recent progress and challenges, and offer our perspective on the exploration of 2DLM-based vdWHs for future application in electronics and optoelectronics. With a dangling-bond-free surface, two dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) can enable the creation of diverse van der Waals heterostructures (vdWHs) without the conventional constraint of lattice matching or process compatibility. This Review discusses the recent advances in exploring 2DLM vdWHs for future electronics and optoelectronics.

Van der Waals heterostructures and devices

https://pr.ibs.re.kr/bitstream/8788114/3718/1/Recent%20development_Materials%20Today_Young%20Hee%20Lee.pdf

Recent Development of Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides and Their Applications

The large-scale growth of semiconducting thin films forms the basis of modern electronics and optoelectronics. A decrease in film thickness to the ultimate limit of the atomic, sub-nanometre length scale, a difficult limit for traditional semiconductors (such as Si and GaAs), would bring wide benefits for applications in ultrathin and flexible electronics, photovoltaics and display technology. For this, transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which can form stable three-atom-thick monolayers, provide ideal semiconducting materials with high electrical carrier mobility, and their large-scale growth on insulating substrates would enable the batch fabrication of atomically thin high-performance transistors and photodetectors on a technologically relevant scale without film transfer. In addition, their unique electronic band structures provide novel ways of enhancing the functionalities of such devices, including the large excitonic effect, bandgap modulation, indirect-to-direct bandgap transition, piezoelectricity and valleytronics. However, the large-scale growth of monolayer TMD films with spatial homogeneity and high electrical performance remains an unsolved challenge. Here we report the preparation of high-mobility 4-inch wafer-scale films of monolayer molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) and tungsten disulphide, grown directly on insulating SiO2 substrates, with excellent spatial homogeneity over the entire films. They are grown with a newly developed, metal-organic chemical vapour deposition technique, and show high electrical performance, including an electron mobility of 30 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) at room temperature and 114 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) at 90 K for MoS2, with little dependence on position or channel length. With the use of these films we successfully demonstrate the wafer-scale batch fabrication of high-performance monolayer MoS2 field-effect transistors with a 99% device yield and the multi-level fabrication of vertically stacked transistor devices for three-dimensional circuitry. Our work is a step towards the realization of atomically thin integrated circuitry.

High-mobility three-atom-thick semiconducting films with wafer-scale homogeneity

Aberration-corrected optics have made electron microscopy at atomic resolution a widespread and often essential tool for characterizing nanoscale structures. Image resolution has traditionally been improved by increasing the numerical aperture of the lens (α) and the beam energy, with the state-of-the-art at 300 kiloelectronvolts just entering the deep sub-angstrom (that is, less than 0.5 angstrom) regime. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are imaged at lower beam energies to avoid displacement damage from large momenta transfers, limiting spatial resolution to about 1 angstrom. Here, by combining an electron microscope pixel-array detector with the dynamic range necessary to record the complete distribution of transmitted electrons and full-field ptychography to recover phase information from the full phase space, we increase the spatial resolution well beyond the traditional numerical-aperture-limited resolution. At a beam energy of 80 kiloelectronvolts, our ptychographic reconstruction improves the image contrast of single-atom defects in MoS2 substantially, reaching an information limit close to 5α, which corresponds to an Abbe diffraction-limited resolution of 0.39 angstrom, at the electron dose and imaging conditions for which conventional imaging methods reach only 0.98 angstrom.

Electron ptychography of 2D materials to deep sub-ångström resolution

High-performance semiconductor films with vertical compositions that are designed to atomic-scale precision provide the foundation for modern integrated circuitry and novel materials discovery One approach to realizing such films is sequential layer-by-layer assembly, whereby atomically thin two-dimensional building blocks are vertically stacked, and held together by van der Waals interactions With this approach, graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides-which represent one- and three-atom-thick two-dimensional building blocks, respectively-have been used to realize previously inaccessible heterostructures with interesting physical properties However, no large-scale assembly method exists at present that maintains the intrinsic properties of these two-dimensional building blocks while producing pristine interlayer interfaces, thus limiting the layer-by-layer assembly method to small-scale proof-of-concept demonstrations Here we report the generation of wafer-scale semiconductor films with a very high level of spatial uniformity and pristine interfaces The vertical composition and properties of these films are designed at the atomic scale using layer-by-layer assembly of two-dimensional building blocks under vacuum We fabricate several large-scale, high-quality heterostructure films and devices, including superlattice films with vertical compositions designed layer-by-layer, batch-fabricated tunnel device arrays with resistances that can be tuned over four orders of magnitude, band-engineered heterostructure tunnel diodes, and millimetre-scale ultrathin membranes and windows The stacked films are detachable, suspendable and compatible with water or plastic surfaces, which will enable their integration with advanced optical and mechanical systems

Layer-by-layer assembly of two-dimensional materials into wafer-scale heterostructures

Epitaxy forms the basis of modern electronics and optoelectronics. We report coherent atomically thin superlattices in which different transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers—despite large lattice mismatches—are repeated and laterally integrated without dislocations within the monolayer plane. Grown by an omnidirectional epitaxy, these superlattices display fully matched lattice constants across heterointerfaces while maintaining an isotropic lattice structure and triangular symmetry. This strong epitaxial strain is precisely engineered via the nanoscale supercell dimensions, thereby enabling broad tuning of the optical properties and producing photoluminescence peak shifts as large as 250 millielectron volts. We present theoretical models to explain this coherent growth and the energetic interplay governing the ripple formation in these strained monolayers. Such coherent superlattices provide building blocks with targeted functionalities at the atomically thin limit.

Coherent, atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenide superlattices with engineered strain

With the decrease of the dimensions of electronic devices, the role played by electrical contacts is ever increasing, eventually coming to dominate the overall device volume and total resistance. This is especially problematic for monolayers of semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which are promising candidates for atomically thin electronics. Ideal electrical contacts to them would require the use of similarly thin electrode materials while maintaining low contact resistances. Here we report a scalable method to fabricate ohmic graphene edge contacts to two representative monolayer TMDs, MoS2 and WS2. The graphene and TMD layer are laterally connected with wafer-scale homogeneity, no observable overlap or gap, and a low average contact resistance of 30 kΩ·μm. The resulting graphene edge contacts show linear current–voltage (I–V) characteristics at room temperature, with ohmic behavior maintained down to liquid helium temperatures.

Saien Xie

Papers

High-mobility three-atom-thick semiconducting films with wafer-scale homogeneity

Electron ptychography of 2D materials to deep sub-ångström resolution

Layer-by-layer assembly of two-dimensional materials into wafer-scale heterostructures

Coherent, atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenide superlattices with engineered strain

Atomically Thin Ohmic Edge Contacts Between Two-Dimensional Materials