Synthesis of mono- and few-layered n-type WSe2 from solid state inorganic precursors

Och M, Anastasiou K, Leontis I, Zemignani GZ, Palczynski P, Mostaed A, Sokolikova MS, Alexeev EM, Bai H, Tartakovskii AI, Lischner J, Nellist PD
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Tuning the charge transport properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is pivotal to their future device integration in post-silicon technologies. To date, co-doping of TMDs during growth still proves to be challenging, and the synthesis of doped WSe2, an otherwise ambipolar material, has been mainly limited to p-doping. Here, we demonstrate the synthesis of high-quality n-type monolayered WSe2 flakes using a solid-state precursor for Se, zinc selenide. n-Type transport has been reported with prime electron mobilities of up to 10 cm2 V−1 s−1. We also demonstrate the tuneability of doping to p-type transport with hole mobilities of 50 cm2 V−1 s−1 after annealing in air. n-Doping has been attributed to the presence of Zn adatoms on the WSe2 flakes as revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), spatially resolved time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and angular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (AD-STEM) characterization of WSe2 flakes. Monolayer WSe2 flakes exhibit a sharp photoluminescence (PL) peak at room temperature and highly uniform emission across the entire flake area, indicating a high degree of crystallinity of the material. This work provides new insight into the synthesis of TMDs with charge carrier control, to pave the way towards post-silicon electronics.