Vapor phase epitaxy of antimonene-like nanocrystals on germanium by an MOCVD process

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a scalable MOCVD process for growing antimonene-like nanocrystals on germanium, advancing the potential for integrating 2D antimonene in opto-electronic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel bottom-up MOCVD method assisted by gold nanoparticles for epitaxial growth of antimonene-like nanocrystals on germanium surfaces.

Findings

Growth mechanism involves germanium etching catalyzed by gold nanoparticles.

Ab-initio calculations support epitaxial relationship and strain effects.

Process is compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing.

Abstract

Synthetic two-dimensional (2D) mono-elemental crystals, namely X-enes, have recently emerged as a new frontier for atomically thin nanomaterials with on-demand properties. Among X-enes, antimonene, the \b{eta}-phase allotrope of antimony, is formed by atoms arranged in buckled hexagonal rings bearing a comparatively higher environmental stability with respect to other players of this kind. However, the exploitation of monolayer or few-layer antimonene and other 2D materials in novel opto-electronic devices is still hurdled by the lack of scalable processes. Here, we demonstrated the viability of a bottom-up process for the epitaxial growth of antimonene-like nanocrystals (ANCs), based on a Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) process, assisted by gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) on commensurate (111)-terminated Ge surfaces. The growth mechanism was investigated by large- and local-area microstructural analysis, revealing that the etching of germanium, catalyzed by the Au NPs, led to the ANCs growth on the exposed Ge (111) planes. As a supportive picture, ab-initio calculations rationalized this epitaxial relationship in terms of compressively strained \b{eta}-phase ANCs. Our process could pave the way to the realization of large-area antimonene layers by a deposition process compatible with the current semiconductor manufacturing technology.