Heterostructures formed through abraded van der Waals materials

Abstract

To fully exploit van der Waals materials and their vertically stacked heterostructures, new mass-scalable production routes which are low cost but preserve the high electronic and optical quality of the single crystals are required. Here, we demonstrate an approach to realise a variety of functional heterostructures based on van der Waals nanocrystal films produced through the mechanical abrasion of bulk powders. We find significant performance enhancements in abraded heterostructures compared to those fabricated through inkjet printing of nanocrystal dispersions. To highlight the simplicity, applicability and scalability of the device fabrication, we demonstrate a multitude of different functional heterostructures such as resistors, capacitors and photovoltaics. We also demonstrate the creation of energy harvesting devices, such as large area catalytically active coatings for the hydrogen evolution reaction and enhanced triboelectric nanogenerator performance in multilayer films. The ease of device production makes this a promising technological route for up-scalable films and heterostructures.

Recent Advances in 2D Rare Earth Materials

“…[ 22–27 ] 2D materials have been proposed to be a potential material family for the next‐generation optoelectronic devices such as photodetector (PD), transistors, wearable devices, and ultracompact spintronics drives. [ 28–33 ] Nevertheless, the exploring of novel 2D materials is still important for broadening their applications.…”

Drawing WS2 thermal sensors on paper substrates

“…This capability of creating well-defined heterostructures between different van der Waals materials by simply 'drawing' materials on top of each other has been also demonstrated by Withers and co-workers. 19 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence.…”

“…Up to now this method have been extensively used to fabricate several sensors and electronic devices based on graphite 9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and very recently it has been extended to other van der Waals materials like semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides. 19,20 Here, we exploit the strong temperature dependence of the resistance of semiconducting WS 2 to fabricate thermal sensors on paper substrates. We find a strong drop of the device resistance upon a temperature increase, as expected from thermally activated charge carrier transport in a semiconductor material, which makes these devices extremely sensitive to small changes in temperature.…”

Integrating superconducting van der Waals materials on paper substrates

“…New fabrication techniques have been developed in the last years to overcome that issue, and now vdW materials can be deposited onto paper substrates using inkjet printing of inks prepared by liquidphase exfoliation 7,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] or by a recently reported all-dry abrasion-induced deposition method. 20,21 Up to now these methods already demonstrated that one can fabricate heterostructures and pattern complex devices, with high spatial resolution, with conducting, semiconducting and insulating vdW materials on paper. [13][14][15][16] During the elaboration of this manuscript Novoselov, Lu and co-workers demonstrated the preparation of inks of monolayer NbSe 2 through a mild electrochemical exfoliation method and their use to print superconducting films on SiO 2 /Si substrates by inkjet printing.…”