Understanding and predicting trends in adsorption energetics on monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

TL;DR

This paper investigates how transition metal adatoms adsorb on 2D TMDs, revealing consistent energetic trends and models that inform the design of low-energy, high-density resistive switching devices.

Contribution

It develops relationships between adsorption energies and material descriptors, providing models that explain adsorption trends across various TMDs and informing NVRS device development.

Findings

Adsorption energies show consistent trends across TMDs.

Simple descriptors can predict adsorption energies.

Models connect adsorption energies to switching energy.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have recently been shown to demonstrate non-volatile resistive switching (NVRS), offering significant advantages such as high-density integration and low energy consumption due to their atomic-scale thinness. In this study, we focus on the adsorption and desorption of metal adatoms, which can modulate the electrical resistivity by several orders of magnitude. We develop material-based relationships of the adsorption energy with electronic and atomic structure descriptors by examining the effects of various transition-metal adsorbates on the surface of TMDs. Our results reveal that adsorption energies of transition metals exhibit consistent trends across different TMDs (MoS$_2$, MoSe$_2$, WS$_2$, WSe$_2$) and can be explained using simple descriptors of the atomic and electronic structure. We propose several models to describe this adsorption process, providing a deeper understanding of a crucial step in the resistive switching mechanism based on formation and dissolution of point defects. Finally, we connect our computed adsorption energies to the switching energy. These findings will help guide rational materials selection for the development of NVRS devices using 2D TMDs.