Rubbing-induced site-selective growth of device patterns

Abstract

The superior electronic and mechanical properties of 2D-layered transition metal dichalcogenides and other 2D layered materials could be exploited to make a broad range of devices with attractive functionalities. However, the nanofabrication of such layered-material-based devices still needs resist-based lithography and plasma etching processes for patterning layered materials into functional device features. Such patterning processes lead to unavoidable contaminations, to which the transport characteristics of atomically-thin layered materials are very sensitive. More seriously, such lithography-introduced contaminants cannot be safely eliminated by conventional material wafer cleaning approaches. This disclosure introduces a rubbing-induced site-selective growth method capable of directly generating few-layer molybdenum disulfide device patterns without the need of any additional patterning processes. This method consists of two critical steps: (i) a damage-free mechanical rubbing process for generating microscale triboelectric charge patterns on a dielectric surface, and (ii) site-selective deposition of molybdenum disulfide or the like within rubbing-induced charge patterns.