Thuc Hue Ly

Transferred wrinkled Al2O3 for highly stretchable and transparent graphene–carbon nanotube transistors

Despite recent progress in producing transparent and bendable thin-film transistors using graphene and carbon nanotubes, the development of stretchable devices remains limited either by fragile inorganic oxides or polymer dielectrics with high leakage current. Here we report the fabrication of highly stretchable and transparent field-effect transistors combining graphene/single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) electrodes and a SWCNT-network channel with a geometrically wrinkled inorganic dielectric layer. The wrinkled Al2O3 layer contained effective built-in air gaps with a small gate leakage current of 10(-13) A. The resulting devices exhibited an excellent on/off ratio of ~10(5), a high mobility of ~40 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) and a low operating voltage of less than 1 V. Importantly, because of the wrinkled dielectric layer, the transistors retained performance under strains as high as 20% without appreciable leakage current increases or physical degradation. No significant performance loss was observed after stretching and releasing the devices for over 1,000 times. The sustainability and performance advances demonstrated here are promising for the adoption of stretchable electronics in a wide variety of future applications.

Observing Grain Boundaries in CVD-Grown Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Two-dimensional monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMdCs), driven by graphene science, revisit optical and electronic properties, which are markedly different from bulk characteristics. These properties are easily modified due to accessibility of all the atoms viable to ambient gases, and therefore, there is no guarantee that impurities and defects such as vacancies, grain boundaries, and wrinkles behave as those of ideal bulk. On the other hand, this could be advantageous in engineering such defects. Here, we report a method of observing grain boundary distribution of monolayer TMdCs by a selective oxidation. This was implemented by exposing directly the TMdC layer grown on sapphire without transfer to ultraviolet light irradiation under moisture-rich conditions. The generated oxygen and hydroxyl radicals selectively functionalized defective grain boundaries in TMdCs to provoke morphological changes at the boundary, where the grain boundary distribution was observed by atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. This paves the way toward the investigation of transport properties engineered by defects and grain boundaries.

Chemically Doped Random Network Carbon Nanotube p–n Junction Diode for Rectifier

Semiconductors with higher carrier mobility and carrier density are required to fabricate a p-n junction diode for high-speed device operation and high-frequency signal processing. Here, we use a chemically doped semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) random network for a field effect transistor (FET) and demonstrate a rectifier operated at a wide range of frequencies by fabricating a p-n junction diode. The p-n diode was fabricated by using a pristine p-type SWCNT-FET where half was covered by SiO(2) and the other half was chemically doped by using benzyl viologen molecules, which was converted into an n-type channel. The half-wave rectifier of the random network SWCNT p-n junction diode clearly highlights the device operation under high input signal frequencies up to 10 MHz with very low output distortion, which a commercial silicon p-n junction diode cannot access. These results indicate that the random network SWCNT p-n junction diodes can be used as building blocks of complex circuits in a range of applications in microelectronics, optoelectronics, sensors, and other systems.

Oxidation Effect in Octahedral Hafnium Disulfide Thin Film

Atomically smooth van der Waals materials are structurally stable in a monolayer and a few layers but are susceptible to oxygen-rich environments. In particular, recently emerging materials such as black phosphorus and perovskite have revealed stronger environmental sensitivity than other two-dimensional layered materials, often obscuring the interesting intrinsic electronic and optical properties. Unleashing the true potential of these materials requires oxidation-free sample preparation that protects thin flakes from air exposure. Here, we fabricated few-layer hafnium disulfide (HfS2) field effect transistors (FETs) using an integrated vacuum cluster system and study their electronic properties and stability under ambient conditions. By performing all the device fabrication and characterization procedure under an oxygen- and moisture-free environment, we found that few-layer AA-stacking HfS2-FETs display excellent field effect responses (Ion/Ioff ≈ 10(7)) with reduced hysteresis compared to the FETs prepared under ambient conditions. Oxidation of HfS2 occurs uniformly over the entire area, increasing the film thickness by 250% at a prolonged oxidation time of >120 h, while defects on the surface are the preferential initial oxidation sites. We further demonstrated that the stability of the device in air is significantly improved by passivating FETs with BN in a vacuum cluster.

Misorientation-angle-dependent electrical transport across molybdenum disulfide grain boundaries

Grain boundaries in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides have unique atomic defect structures and band dispersion relations that depend on the inter-domain misorientation angle. Here, we explore misorientation angle-dependent electrical transport at grain boundaries in monolayer MoS2 by correlating the atomic defect structures of measured devices analysed with transmission electron microscopy and first-principles calculations. Transmission electron microscopy indicates that grain boundaries are primarily composed of 5–7 dislocation cores with periodicity and additional complex defects formed at high angles, obeying the classical low-angle theory for angles <22°. The inter-domain mobility is minimized for angles <9° and increases nonlinearly by two orders of magnitude before saturating at ∼16 cm2 V−1 s−1 around misorientation angle≈20°. This trend is explained via grain-boundary electrostatic barriers estimated from density functional calculations and experimental tunnelling barrier heights, which are ≈0.5 eV at low angles and ≈0.15 eV at high angles (≥20°).

Visualizing Point Defects in Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides Using Optical Microscopy.

While transmission electron microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy reveal atomic structures of point defect and grain boundary in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), information on point defect distribution in macroscale is still not available. Herein, we visualize the point defect distribution of monolayer TMDs using dark-field optical microscopy. This was realized by anchoring silver nanoparticles on defect sites of MoS2 under light illumination. The optical images clearly revealed that the point defect distribution varies with light power and exposure time. The number of silver nanoparticles increased initially and reached a plateau in response to light power or exposure time. The size of silver nanoparticles was a few hundred nanometers in the plateau region as observed using optical microscopy. The measured defect density in macroscale was ∼2 × 10(10) cm(-2), slightly lower than the observed value (4 × 10(11) cm(-2)) from scanning tunneling microscopy.

Optical Gain in MoS2 via Coupling with Nanostructured Substrate: Fabry-Perot Interference and Plasmonic Excitation

Despite the direct band gap of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), their optical gain remains limited because of the poor light absorption in atomically thin, layered materials. Most approaches to improve the optical gain of TMDs mainly involve modulation of the active materials or multilayer stacking. Here, we report a method to enhance the optical absorption and emission in MoS2 simply through the design of a nanostructured substrate. The substrate consisted of a dielectric nanofilm spacer (TiO2) and metal film. The overall photoluminescence intensity from monolayer MoS2 on the nanostructured substrate was engineered based on the TiO2 thickness and amplified by Fabry-Perot interference. In addition, the neutral exciton emission was selectively amplified by plasmonic excitations from the local field originating from the surface roughness of the metal film with spacer thicknesses of less than 10 nm. We further demonstrate that the quality factor of the device can also be engineered by selecting a spacer material with a different refractive index.

Vertically Conductive MoS2 Spiral Pyramid

MoS2 spirals grown by the chemical vapor deposition method, driven by a threading dislocation, has a peculiar rhombohedral-like structure. This threading dislocation can carry helical current in the vertical direction and greatly enhances the vertical conductance in the MoS2 multilayer samples.

Two-dimensional membrane as elastic shell with proof on the folds revealed by three-dimensional atomic mapping

The great application potential for two-dimensional (2D) membranes (MoS2, WSe2, graphene and so on) aroused much effort to understand their fundamental mechanical properties. The out-of-plane bending rigidity is the key factor that controls the membrane morphology under external fields. Herein we provide an easy method to reconstruct the 3D structures of the folded edges of these 2D membranes on the atomic scale, using high-resolution (S)TEM images. After quantitative comparison with continuum mechanics shell model, it is verified that the bending behaviour of the studied 2D materials can be well explained by the linear elastic shell model. And the bending rigidities can thus be derived by fitting with our experimental results. Recall almost only theoretical approaches can access the bending properties of these 2D membranes before, now a new experimental method to measure the bending rigidity of such flexible and atomic thick 2D membranes is proposed.

Dynamical observations on the crack tip zone and stress corrosion of two-dimensional MoS2.

Whether and how fracture mechanics needs to be modified for small length scales and in systems of reduced dimensionality remains an open debate. Here, employing in situ transmission electron microscopy, atomic structures and dislocation dynamics in the crack tip zone of a propagating crack in two-dimensional (2D) monolayer MoS2 membrane are observed, and atom-to-atom displacement mapping is obtained. The electron beam is used to initiate the crack; during in situ observation of crack propagation the electron beam effect is minimized. The observed high-frequency emission of dislocations is beyond previous understanding of the fracture of brittle MoS2. Strain analysis reveals dislocation emission to be closely associated with the crack propagation path in nanoscale. The critical crack tip plastic zone size of nearly perfect 2D MoS2 is between 2 and 5 nm, although it can grow to 10 nm under corrosive conditions such as ultraviolet light exposure, showing enhanced dislocation activity via defect generation.