Overview of Rational Design of Binary Alloy for the Synthesis of Two-Dimensional Materials

Hongyan Zhu,Zhiyuan Shi,Xuefu Zhang,Chao Zhang,Guanghui Yu,Tianru Wu

doi:10.3390/surfaces3010003

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials attracted widespread interest as unique and novel properties different from their bulk crystals, providing great potential for semiconductor devices and applications. Recently, the family of 2D materials has been expanded including but not limited to graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), transition metal carbides (TMCs), and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). Metal-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is an effective method to achieve precise synthesis of these 2D materials. In this review, we focus on designing various binary alloys to realize controllable synthesis of multiple CVD-grown 2D materials and their heterostructures for both fundamental research and practical applications. Further investigations indicated that the design of the catalytic substrate is an important issue, which determines the morphology, domain size, thickness and quality of 2D materials and their heterostructures.

Highlights

Since graphene was first successfully prepared by mechanical exfoliation from graphite [1], two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted extensive attention due to their unique structural and physical properties [2,3,4]
2 /Si growth temperature and cooling rate; (e,f) atomic force microscopy (AFM) height images of graphene transferred onto a 285 substrate, the dashed lines illustrate the hexagonal multilayer islands; (g,h) height profiles from the
A great challenge for heterostructure synthesis attributed to the sulfide reaction of the metal substrate, which resulted in the decomposition of the pre-grown transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs)/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) heterostructures

Summary

Introduction

Since graphene was first successfully prepared by mechanical exfoliation from graphite [1], two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted extensive attention due to their unique structural and physical properties [2,3,4]. With various catalytic properties and different solubility of specific atoms have been extensively studied to obtain uniform, large-area and high quality 2D materials. Surface-limited growth process induced monolayer graphene on Au [21], Pt [19], and Cu [16,17] due to the negligible solubility of reaction atoms. The catalytic growth of wafer scale single crystalline 2D materials and scalable construction of complex heterostructures with designed spatial modulation on single component metal are still challenging. By rationally designing the composition, proportion and crystal orientation of binary alloys, various metals with different catalytic properties could be combined to develop a facile and controllable strategy to achieve the scalable CVD fabrication. The present strategy can be extended to any well-defined alloys, which will greatly facilitate the controllable construction of various 2D heterostructures for practical applications

Synthesis of Graphene on Cu-Ni Alloy

Synthesis of h-BN on Binary Alloy

Other 2D Materials Grown on Binary Alloy

Findings

Conclusions