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Title: Identifying substitutional oxygen as a prolific point defect in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2];  [4];  [3];  [5];  [6];  [3];  [3];  [7];  [3];  [3]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [8];  [8];  [3]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of the Basque Country, Donostia (Spain); Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) (Spain)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne (Switzlerland)
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Korea Inst. of Science and Technology, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)
  6. Univ. of the Basque Country, Donostia (Spain); Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) (Spain)
  7. Pusan National Univ., Busan (Korea, Republic of)
  8. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Chalcogen vacancies are generally considered to be the most common point defects in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors because of their low formation energy in vacuum and their frequent observation in transmission electron microscopy studies. Consequently, unexpected optical, transport, and catalytic properties in 2D-TMDs have been attributed to in-gap states associated with chalcogen vacancies, even in the absence of direct experimental evidence. Here, we combine low-temperature non-contact atomic force microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, and state-of-the-art ab initio density functional theory and GW calculations to determine both the atomic structure and electronic properties of an abundant chalcogen-site point defect common to MoSe2 and WS2 monolayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy and chemical vapor deposition, respectively. Surprisingly, we observe no in-gap states. Our results strongly suggest that the common chalcogen defects in the described 2D-TMD semiconductors, measured in vacuum environment after gentle annealing, are oxygen substitutional defects, rather than vacancies.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1559239
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 188 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (7)

Defect Engineering of Photocatalysts for Solar Energy Conversion journal April 2020
Visualization of point defects in ultrathin layered 1T-PtSe 2 journal September 2019
Collective excitations in 2D atomic layers: Recent perspectives journal January 2020
Chemically Tuned p‐ and n‐Type WSe 2 Monolayers with High Carrier Mobility for Advanced Electronics journal September 2019
Theory and Ab Initio Calculation of Optically Excited States—Recent Advances in 2D Materials journal December 2019
Site-selectively generated photon emitters in monolayer MoS2 via local helium ion irradiation journal June 2019
Scalable single-photon sources in atomically thin MoS2 text January 2020

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