Automated Mechanical Exfoliation of MoS2 and MoTe2 Layers for 2D Materials Applications

Published

September 13, 2019

Author(s)

Albert Davydov, Sergiy Krylyuk, Kyle J. DiCamillo, Makarand Paranjape, Wendy Shi

Abstract

An automated technique is presented for mechanically exfoliating single-layer and few-layer transition metal dichalcogenides using controlled shear and normal forces imposed by a parallel plate rheometer. A thin sample that is removed from bulk MoS2 or MoTe2 is initially attached to the movable upper fixture of the rheometer using blue dicing tape while the lower base plate also has the same tape to capture and exfoliate samples when the two plates are brought into contact then separated. A step-and-repeat exfoliation process is initiated using a preprogrammed contact force and liftoff speed. It was determined that atomically thin films of these materials could be obtained reproducibly using this technique, achieving single-layer and few-layer thicknesses for engineering novel 2-D transistor devices for future electronic technologies. We show that varying the parameters of the rheometer program can improve the mechanical exfoliation process.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology

Volume

18

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Mechanical exfoliation, molybdenum disulfide, molybdenum ditelluride, two-dimensional materials

Citation

Davydov, A. , Krylyuk, S. , DiCamillo, K. , Paranjape, M. and Shi, W. (2019), Automated Mechanical Exfoliation of MoS2 and MoTe2 Layers for 2D Materials Applications, IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=926686 (Accessed October 8, 2025)