Wrinkling
two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides
(TMDCs) provides a mechanism to adjust the physical and chemical properties
as per need. Traditionally, TMDCs wrinkles achieved by transferring
exfoliated materials on prestretched polymer suffer from poor control
and limited sample area, which significantly hinders desirable applications.
Herein, we fabricate large-area monolayer TMDCs wrinkle arrays directly
on the m-quartz substrate using strained epitaxy.
The uniaxial thermal expansion coefficient mismatch between the substrate
and TMDCs materials enables the generation of large uniaxial thermal
strain. By quenching the TMDCs after growth, this uniaxial thermal
strain can be quickly released as a form of wrinkle arrays along the
[0001]quartz direction. Using WS2 as a model
system, the size of as-grown wrinkles can be finely modulated within
sub-100 nm by changing the quenching temperature. These WS2 wrinkles can be locally folded and form various multilayer structures
with odd layer numbers during the transfer process. Besides, the corrugated
structures in WS2 wrinkles induce significant changes to
optical properties including anisotropic Raman response, enhanced
photoluminescence, and second harmonic generation emissions. Furthermore,
these wrinkle arrays exhibit enhanced chemical reactivity that can
be selectively engineered to ribbon arrays with improved electrocatalytic
performance. The developed strategy of strained epitaxy here should
enable flexibility in the design of more sophisticated 2D-based structures,
offering a simple but effective way toward the modulation of properties
with enhanced performances.