Nils Scheuschner

Edge and confinement effects allow in situ measurement of size and thickness of liquid-exfoliated nanosheets

Two-dimensional nanomaterials such as MoS2 are of great interest both because of their novel physical properties and their applications potential. Liquid exfoliation, an important production method, is limited by our inability to quickly and easily measure nanosheet size, thickness or concentration. Here we demonstrate a method to simultaneously determine mean values of these properties from an optical extinction spectrum measured on a liquid dispersion of MoS2 nanosheets. The concentration measurement is based on the size-independence of the low-wavelength extinction coefficient, while the size and thickness measurements rely on the effect of edges and quantum confinement on the optical spectra. The resultant controllability of concentration, size and thickness facilitates the preparation of dispersions with pre-determined properties such as high monolayer-content, leading to first measurement of A-exciton MoS2 luminescence in liquid suspensions. These techniques are general and can be applied to a range of two-dimensional materials including WS2, MoSe2 and WSe2.

Photoluminescence of freestanding single- and few-layerMoS2

We present a photoluminescence study of freestanding and Si/SiO2 supported single- and few-layer MoS2. The single-layer exciton peak (A) is only observed in freestanding MoS2. The photoluminescence of supported single-layer MoS2 is instead originating from the A- (trion) peak as the MoS2 is n-type doped from the substrate. In bilayer MoS2, the van der Waals interaction with the substrate is decreasing the indirect band gap energy by up to ~ 80 meV. Furthermore, the photoluminescence spectra of suspended MoS2 can be influenced by interference effects.

Radiation hardness of graphene and MoS2 field effect devices against swift heavy ion irradiation

We have investigated the deterioration of field effect transistors based on two-dimensional materials due to irradiation with swift heavy ions. Devices were prepared with exfoliated single layers of MoS2 and graphene, respectively. They were characterized before and after irradiation with 1.14 GeV U28+ ions using three different fluences. By electrical characterization, atomic force microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, we show that the irradiation leads to significant changes of structural and electrical properties. At the highest fluence of 4 × 1011 ions/cm2, the MoS2 transistor is destroyed, while the graphene based device remains operational, albeit with an inferior performance.

Effect of contaminations and surface preparation on the work function of single layer MoS2

Summary Thinning out MoS2 crystals to atomically thin layers results in the transition from an indirect to a direct bandgap material. This makes single layer MoS2 an exciting new material for electronic devices. In MoS2 devices it has been observed that the choice of materials, in particular for contact and gate, is crucial for their performance. This makes it very important to study the interaction between ultrathin MoS2 layers and materials employed in electronic devices in order to optimize their performance. In this work we used NC-AFM in combination with quantitative KPFM to study the influence of the substrate material and the processing on single layer MoS2 during device fabrication. We find a strong influence of contaminations caused by the processing on the surface potential of MoS2. It is shown that the charge transfer from the substrate is able to change the work function of MoS2 by about 40 meV. Our findings suggest two things. First, the necessity to properly clean devices after processing as contaminations have a great impact on the surface potential. Second, that by choosing appropriate materials the work function can be modified to reduce contact resistance.

Fundamental Insights into the Degradation and Stabilization of Thin Layer Black Phosphorus

Herein, we have developed a systematic study on the oxidation and passivation of mechanically exfoliated black phosphorus (BP). We analyzed the strong anisotropic behavior of BP by scanning Raman microscopy providing an accurate method for monitoring the oxidation of BP via statistical Raman spectroscopy. Furthermore, different factors influencing the environmental instability of the BP, i.e., thickness, lateral dimensions or visible light illumination, have been investigated in detail. Finally, we discovered that the degradation of few-layer BP flakes of <10 nm can be suppressed for months by using ionic liquids, paving the way for the development of BP-based technologies.

Interlayer resonant Raman modes in few-layerMoS2

We report two new first-order Raman modes in the spectra of few-layer MoS2 at 286 cm−1 and 471 cm−1 for excitation energies above 2.4 eV. These modes appear only in few-layer MoS2; therefore their absence provides an easy and accurate method to identify single-layer MoS2. We show that these modes are related to phonons that are not observed in the single layer due to their symmetry. Each of these phonons leads to several nearly degenerate phonons in few-layer samples. The nearly degenerate phonons in few-layer materials belong to two different symmetry representations, showing opposite behavior under inversion or horizontal reflection. As a result, Raman active phonons exist in few-layer materials that have nearly the same frequency as the symmetry forbidden phonon of the single layer. We provide here a general treatment of this effect for all few-layer two-dimensional crystal structures with an inversion center or a mirror plane parallel to the layers. We show that always nearly degenerate phonon modes of different symmetry must occur and, as a result, similar pseudo-activation effects can be excepted.

Graphene on Si(111)7×7

We demonstrate that it is possible to mechanically exfoliate graphene under ultrahigh vacuum conditions on the atomically well defined surface of single crystalline silicon. The flakes are several hundred nanometers in lateral size and their optical contrast is very faint, in agreement with calculated data. Single-layer graphene is investigated by Raman mapping. The graphene and 2D peaks are shifted and narrowed compared to undoped graphene. With spatially resolved Kelvin probe measurements we show that this is due to p-type doping with hole densities of n(h) ~/= 6 × 10(12) cm(-2). The in vacuo preparation technique presented here should open up new possibilities to influence the properties of graphene by introducing adsorbates in a controlled way.