Heteroepitaxial growth of high optical quality, wafer-scale van der Waals heterostrucutres

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the direct epitaxial growth of high-quality, wafer-scale MoSe2 on hBN using a combined MOVPE and MBE process, achieving uniform optical properties across a two-inch wafer.

Contribution

It introduces a novel large-scale growth method for TMD/hBN heterostructures combining MOVPE and MBE, enabling high-quality, homogeneous monolayers.

Findings

High optical quality MoSe2 grown on hBN with narrow excitonic lines.

Uniform excitonic energy deviation of only +/-0.14 meV across the wafer.

Successful large-scale epitaxial growth on a two-inch wafer.

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are materials that can exhibit intriguing optical properties like a change of the bandgap from indirect to direct when being thinned down to a monolayer. Well-resolved narrow excitonic resonances can be observed for such monolayers, however only for materials of sufficient crystalline quality, so far mostly available in the form of micrometer-sized flakes. A further significant improvement of optical and electrical properties can be achieved by transferring the TMD on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). To exploit the full potential of TMDs in future applications, epitaxial techniques have to be developed that not only allow to growlarge-scale, high-quality TMD monolayers, but allow to perform the growth directly on large-scale epitaxial hBN. In this work we address this problem and demonstrate that MoSe2 of high optical quality can be directly grown on epitaxial hBN on an entire two-inch wafer. We developed a combined growth theme for which hBN is first synthesized at high temperature by Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE) and as a second step MoSe2 is deposited on top by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) at much lower temperatures. We show that this structure exhibits excellent optical properties, manifested by narrow excitonic lines in the photoluminescence spectra. Moreover, the material is homogeneous on the area of the whole two-inch wafer, with only +/-0.14 meV deviation of excitonic energy. Our mixed growth technique may guide the way for future large-scale production of high quality TMD/hBN heterostructures.