Principles for 2D-Material-Assisted Nitrides Epitaxial Growth

Beyond traditional heteroepitaxy, 2D-materials-assisted epitaxy opens opportunities to revolutionize future material integration methods. However, basic principles in 2D-material-assisted nitrides' epitaxy remain unclear, which impedes understanding the essence, thus hindering its progress. Here, the crystallographic information of nitrides/2D material interface is theoretically established, which is further confirmed experimentally. It is found that the atomic interaction at the nitrides/2D material interface is related to the nature of underlying substrates. For single-crystalline substrates, the heterointerface behaves like a covalent one and the epilayer inherits the substrate's lattice. Meanwhile, for amorphous substrates, the heterointerface tends to be a van der Waals one and strongly relies on the properties of 2D materials. Therefore, modulated by graphene, the nitrides' epilayer is polycrystalline. In contrast, single-crystalline GaN films are successfully achieved on WS2. These results provide a suitable growth-front construction strategy for high-quality 2D-material-assisted nitrides' epitaxy. It also opens a pathway toward various semiconductors heterointegration.

Automated summary

Beyond traditional heteroepitaxy, 2D-materials-assisted epitaxy opens opportunities to revolutionize future material integration methods. However, basic principles in 2D-material-assisted nitrides' epitaxy remain unclear, which impedes understanding the essence, thus hindering its progress. Here, the crystallographic information of nitrides/2D material interface is theoretically established, which is further confirmed experimentally. It is found that the atomic interaction at the nitrides/2D material interface is related to the nature of underlying substrates. For single-crystalline substrates, the heterointerface behaves like a covalent one and the epilayer inherits the substrate's lattice. Meanwhile, for amorphous substrates, the heterointerface tends to be a van der Waals one and strongly relies on the properties of 2D materials. Therefore, modulated by graphene, the nitrides' epilayer is polycrystalline. In contrast, single-crystalline GaN films are successfully achieved on WS2. These results provide a suitable growth-front construction strategy for high-quality 2D-material-assisted nitrides' epitaxy. It also opens a pathway toward various semiconductors heterointegration.