Scalable Epitaxial Growth of WSe2 Thin Films on SiO2/Si via a Self-Assembled PtSe2 Buffer Layer

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 9; no. 1; p. 8017
• Main Authors: Wu, Pei-Chen, Yang, Chun-Liang, Du, Yuanmin, Lai, Chih-Huang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 29.05.2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 140/133; 140/146; 639/301/357/551; 639/925/927/1007; Chemical vapor deposition; Glass substrates; Humanities and Social Sciences; Morphology; multidisciplinary; Platinum; Scanning electron microscopy; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Silicon dioxide; Spectrum analysis; Thin films; Tungsten
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44518-3

The growth of large-area epitaxial transition metal dichalgogenides (TMDCs) are of central importance for scalable integrated device applications. Different methods have been developed to achieve large-sized high quality films. However, reliable approaches for centimeter-sized or even wafer-level epitaxial growth of TMDCs are still lacking. Here we demonstrate a new method to grow inch-sized epitaxial WSe 2 films on SiO 2 /Si substrates at a much lower temperature with high repeatability and scalability. High quality crystalline films are achieved through direct selenization of a tungsten film with platinum as the underlayer. The self-assembled PtSe 2 buffer layer, formed during selenization, assists epitaxial growth of WSe 2 . Using fabricated WSe 2 films, excellent performance memory devices are demonstrated. As a member of the TMDC family, our findings based on WSe 2 may also be applied to other TMDC materials for large-scale production of high quality TMDC films for various applications.