Growth and Thermo-driven Crystalline Phase Transition of Metastable Monolayer 1T'-WSe2 Thin Film

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the growth of metastable monolayer 1T'-WSe2 and its thermo-driven phase transition to the 2H phase, providing insights into controlling topological phases in 2D materials.

Contribution

It reports the first molecular beam epitaxial growth of metastable 1T'-WSe2 monolayer and investigates its phase transition behavior on different substrates.

Findings

1T'-WSe2 can be grown on bilayer graphene via MBE.

The metastable 1T' phase transforms into 2H phase upon annealing.

Phase transition temperature depends on the substrate used.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides MX2 (M = Mo, W, X = S, Se, Te) attracts enormous research interests in recent years. Its 2H phase possesses an indirect to direct bandgap transition in 2D limit, and thus shows great application potentials in optoelectronic devices [1]. The 1T' crystalline phase transition can drive the monolayer MX2 to be a 2D topological insulator. Here we realized the molecular beam epitaxial (MBE) growth of both the 1T' and 2H phase monolayer WSe2 on bilayer graphene (BLG) substrate. The crystalline structures of these two phases were characterized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The monolayer 1T'-WSe2 was found to be metastable, and can transform into 2H phase under post-annealing procedure. The phase transition temperature of 1T'-WSe2 grown on BLG is lower than that of 1T' phase grown on 2H-WSe2 layers. This thermo-driven crystalline phase transition makes the monolayer WSe2 to be an ideal platform for the controlling of topological phase transitions in 2D materials family.