Versatile, Low-Cost, and Portable 2D Material Transfer Setup with a Facile and Highly Efficient DIY Inert-Atmosphere Glove Compartment Option

Abstract

Research in van der Waals heterostructures has been rapidly progressing in the past decade, thanks to the art of sequential and deterministic placement of one two-dimensional (2D) material over another. The successful creation of heterostructures however has relied largely on expensive transfer systems that are not easily accessible to researchers. Although a few reports on low-cost systems have recently surfaced, the full functionality, portability features, and overall effectiveness of such systems are still being explored. In this work, we present an "all-inone" low-cost transfer setup that is compact, lightweight, and portable and which can be quickly installed with a facile and do it yourself (DIY)-style anaerobic glovebox option that performs at par with commercial anaerobic systems. The "installable" glovebox option means the user has the convenience of quickly converting the working environment into an inert one when air-sensitive 2D materials are used. The lowest RH values obtained in our glovebox is <3%, and the O 2 levels rapidly drop from 21% to less than 0.1% in just a few minutes of purging the chamber with inert gas. The transfer system is also equipped with a light-weight PID-controlled substrate heating option that can be easily assembled within just a few hours. We test the versatility of our low-cost system by the successful creation of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN)-encapsulated graphene and hBN-encapsulated molybdenum disulphide (MoS 2 ) heterostructures using the hot pickup technique and graphene-hBN, MoS 2 -hBN, twisted MoS 2 , and twisted MoS 2 on hBN stacks using the wetting technique, and a MoS 2 -hBN-graphene vertical tunneling heterostructure was formed using a combination approach. The effectiveness of the DIY glovebox is proven with the demonstration of extended stability of freshly exfoliated black phosphorous (BP) flakes, their encapsulation between thin hBN layers, and the formation of electrically contacted BP devices with a protective hBN top layer. At an overall price point of approximately 1000 $, the versatile setup presented here is expected to further contribute to the growth of research in 2D materials, in particular, for researchers initially faced with overcoming a huge entry-level threshold to work in the field of 2D materials and van der Waals heterostructures.

Transfer of 2D Films: From Imperfection to Perfection

“…Unlike wet transfer, which requires ionic liquids to detach the material from the growth substrate, the dry transfer method proves to be a simpler and more cost-effective approach, all while ensuring material quality. − By eliminating ionic liquid during the material removal process from the initial substrate, this method mitigates the potential hazards of liquids, such as contamination and defects in the transferred material or the intended application. Therefore, dry transfer has become an increasingly intriguing technique within the scientific community.…”

Inert-Atmosphere Microfabrication Technology for 2D Materials and Heterostructures

“…Similarly, a pre-owned glovebox is significantly more affordable than a new one, etc. Instead of a motorized one, one can use a manual home-made transfer machine, that costs about USD 1000–1500 [ 11 , 27 , 28 ]. This is less convenient because the manual operations are hindered in the glove box, but it is still acceptable.…”

“…Unfortunately, most 2D materials, except for graphene and its compounds, hexagonal boron nitride, and some transition metal dichalcogenides, like MoS 2 , have a tendency to degrade in air with time [ 7 ]. Assembling van der Waals heterostructures in the inert atmosphere of glove boxes [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ], and even in high vacuum [ 12 , 13 ], is crucial for working with unstable-in-air 2D materials. To prototype a device in an inert atmosphere, the stack is assembled and positioned on the substrate inside the glove box.…”

PMMA direct exfoliation for rapid and organic free transfer of centimeter-scale CVD graphene

“…Further investigations show that the amount of water (moderate or excessive) does not affect much about the transfer result, as long as the water film fully covered the whole graphene region (see SI and videos 2 and 3 for more details). Different from picking up 2D material flakes by the capillary force in previous reports [22,25,26], here the water droplet is utilized to release the large area CVD-grown graphene film onto the target substrate.…”