Synthesis of Large-Area Single- and Few-Layer TMDS by Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Two-Dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) materials have attracted extensive attention in many types of research due to their unique property their remarkable electronic and optoelectronic properties, which include a unique indirect-to-direct bandgap transition with reducing layer numbers, high carrier mobility and strong spin-orbital coupling due to broken inversion symmetry. These interesting properties make TMDs particularly well suited to be used in electronic and optoelectronic devices. Hence, the rational growth of such materials with the desired number of layers and chemical composition is a prerequisite for their successful integration into novel and existing technologies.

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques are considered the most promising method to achieve large-area TMD growth. In this work the synthetic process is reviewed and more advances techniques, using volatile metal-organic precursors are presented. We show the successful growth of large-area (mm²-cm²) single- and few-layer MoS₂ and WS₂ via metal-organic CVD (MOCVD). Our attempts to study the growth mechanism and control the grain-size of such atomic-films is presented as well. The optical, structural and chemical characterization of such films will be reviewed and correlated with the growth parameters.