Controlled Sixfold Symmetric Exfoliation of Oriented MoS2 Monolayers by Coulomb Force
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Fong, Chee Fai
Liu, Xue
Tan, Beng Hau
Zeng, Qingyun
Okada, Yoshinori
Nguyen, Nam‐Trung
An, Hongjie
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Abstract
Atoms, molecules, and nanoparticles can be spatially manipulated by an atomic force microscopy (AFM) tip, through van der Waals (vdW) and/or Coulomb forces. These point-to-point manipulations are highly accurate at nanoscale, facilitating the construction and modification of nanostructures. Nevertheless, it is difficult to manipulate 2D layers in vdW crystals by an AFM tip, because the tip-induced attractive force is usually insufficient to outcompete the interlaminar vdW forces. Herein, manipulation of the surface layers on a MoS2 single crystal by a conductive AFM tip is successfully reported. By applying a bias between the tip and MoS2, the Coulomb attractive force allows the topmost MoS2 layers to be picked up. These exfoliated layers are deformed into micron-sized bubbles with sixfold symmetry, which are composed of high-quality monolayers and visually reflecting the hexagonal lattice orientation. The underlying mechanisms of the sixfold symmetric exfoliation and the formation of monolayers are discussed by in situ monitoring of the tunneling volt-ampere characteristics and simulation of the force distribution. The findings open a new route to obtain high-quality transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers and their derived nanostructures on the surface of TMD single crystals for optoelectronic and photonic device applications.
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Advanced Materials Interfaces
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FT180100361
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© 2024 The Authors. Advanced Materials Interfaces published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Macromolecular and materials chemistry
Materials engineering
Condensed matter physics
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Liu, S; Fong, CF; Liu, X; Tan, BH; Zeng, Q; Okada, Y; Nguyen, N; An, H, Controlled Sixfold Symmetric Exfoliation of Oriented MoS2 Monolayers by Coulomb Force, Advanced Materials Interfaces, 2024, pp. 2300580