Controlled van der Waals epitaxy of monolayer MoS2 triangular domains on graphene.

Abstract

Multilayered heterostructures of two-dimensional materials have recently attracted increased interest because of their unique electronic and optical properties. Here, we present chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of triangular crystals of monolayer MoS2 on single-crystalline hexagonal graphene domains which are also grown by CVD. We found that MoS2 grows selectively on the graphene domains rather than on the bare supporting SiO2 surface. Reflecting the heteroepitaxy of the growth process, the MoS2 domains grown on graphene present two preferred equivalent orientations. The interaction between the MoS2 and the graphene induced an upshift of the Raman G and 2D bands of the graphene, while significant photoluminescence quenching was observed for the monolayer MoS2. Furthermore, photoinduced current modulation along with an optical memory effect was demonstrated for the MoS2-graphene heterostructure. Our work highlights that heterostructures synthesized by CVD offer an effective interlayer van der Waals interaction which can be developed for large-area multilayer electronic and photonic devices.