Rubbing-Induced Site-Selective Growth of MoS ₂ Device Patterns

The superior electronic and mechanical properties of two-dimensional layered transition-metal dichalcogenides 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 semiconductor cleaning approaches. This challenge seriously retards the manufacturing of large arrays of layered material-based devices with consistent characteristics. Toward addressing this challenge, we introduce a rubbing-induced site-selective growth method capable of directly generating few-layer MoS ₂ 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 MoS ₂ within rubbing-induced charge patterns. Our microscopy characterizations in combination with finite element analysis indicate that the field magnitude distribution within triboelectric charge patterns determines the morphologies of grown MoS ₂ patterns. In addition, the MoS ₂ line patterns produced by the presented method have been implemented for making arrays of working transistors and memristors. These devices exhibit a high yield and good uniformity in their electronic properties over large areas. The presented method could be further developed into a cost-efficient nanomanufacturing approach for producing functional device patterns based on various layered materials.