Structural and electrical analysis of epitaxial 2D/3D vertical heterojunctions of monolayer MoS2 on GaN

Abstract

Integration of two-dimensional (2D) and conventional (3D) semiconductors can lead to the formation of vertical heterojunctions with valuable electronic and optoelectronic properties. Regardless of the growth stacking mechanism implemented so far, the quality of the formed heterojunctions is susceptible to defects and contaminations mainly due to the complication involved in the transfer process. We utilize an approach that aims to eliminate the transfer process and achieve epitaxial vertical heterojunctions with low defect interfaces necessary for efficient vertical transport. Monolayers of MoS2 of approximately 2 μm domains are grown epitaxially by powder vaporization on GaN substrates forming a vertical 2D/3D heterojunction. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) is employed to analyze the in-plane lattice constants and van der Waals (vdW) gap between the 2D and 3D semiconductor crystals. The extracted in-plane lattice mismatch between monolayer MoS2 and GaN is only 1.2% which corresponds well to the expected mismatch between bulk MoS2 and GaN. The vdW gap between MoS2 and GaN, extracted from the XTEM measurements, is consistent with the vdW gap of 3.1 Å predicted by our first principles calculations. The effect of monolayer (1L) MoS2 on the electrical characteristics of 2D/3D semiconductor heterojunctions was studied using conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM). The electrical current across the CAFM-tip/1L-MoS2/GaN vertical junctions is dominated by the tip/GaN interface of both n- and p-doped GaN. This electronic transparency of 1L-MoS2 tells us that a 2D crystal component has to be above a certain thickness before it can serve as an independent semiconductor element in 2D/3D heterojunctions.