Two-dimensional
transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been
one of the hottest focus of materials due to the most beneficial electronic
and optoelectronic properties. Up to now, one of the big challenges
is the synthesis of large-area layer-number-controlled single-crystal
films. However, the poor understanding of the growth mechanism seriously
hampers the progress of the scalable production of TMDs with precisely
tunable thickness at an atomic scale. Here, the growth mechanisms
in the vertical direction were systemically studied based on the density
functional theory (DFT) calculation and an advanced chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) growth. As a result, the U-type relation of the TMD
layer number to the ratio of metal/chalcogenide is confirmed by the
capability of ultrafine tuning of the experimental conditions in the
CVD growth. In addition, high-quality uniform monolayer, bilayer,
trilayer, and multilayer TMDs in a large area (8 cm2) were
efficiently synthesized by applying this modified CVD. Although bilayer
TMDs can be obtained at both high and low ratios of metal/chalcogenide
based on the suggested mechanism, they demonstrate significantly different
optical and electronic transport properties. The modified CVD strategy
and the proposed mechanism should be helpful for synthesizing and
large-area thickness-controlled TMDs and understanding their growth
mechanism and could be used in integrated electronics and optoelectronics.
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