Strain-engineered rippling at the bilayer-MoS₂ interface identified by advanced atomic force microscopy

Abstract

The van der Waals interface structures and behaviors are of great importance in determining the physical properties of two-dimensional atomic crystals and their heterostructures. The delicate interfacial properties are sensitively dependent on the mechanical behaviors of atomically thin films under external strain. Here, we investigated the strain-engineered rippling structures at the CVD-grown bilayer-MoS₂ interface with advanced atomic force microscopy (AFM). The in-plane compressive strain is sequentially introduced into the 1L-substrate and 2L-1L interface of bilayer-MoS₂ flakes via a fast-cooling process. The thermal strain-engineered rippling structures were directly visualized at the central 2H- and 3R-MoS₂ bilayer regions with friction force microscopy (FFM) and bimodal AFM techniques. These rippling structures can be further artificially manipulated into the beating-like rippling features and fully erased via the contact mode AFM scanning. Our results shed lights on the strain-engineered interfacial structures of two-dimensional materials and also inspire the further investigation on the interface engineering of their electronic and optical properties.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

rippling / interface / strain-engineered / atomic force microscopy / transition metal dichalcogenides

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Declarations

The authors declare that they have no competing interests and there are no conflicts.

Electronic supplementary materials

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-024-1409-4 and https://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/s11467-024-1409-4.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (MOST) (Grant Nos. 2023YFA1406500 and 2018YFE0202700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Nos. 21622304, 61674045, 11604063, 11974422, and 12104504), the Strategic Priority Research Program (Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS) (No. XDB30000000), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China [Nos. 21XNLG27 (Z.C.) and 22XNH095 (H.D.)]. Y. Y. Geng was supported by the Outstanding Innovative Talents Cultivation Funded Programs 2023 of Renmin University of China.

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