Mazza Michael F, Cabán-Acevedo Miguel, Wiensch Joshua D, Thompson Annelise C, Lewis Nathan S
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 127-72, 210 Noyes Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91125, United States.
Nano Lett. 2020 Apr 8;20(4):2632-2638. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00179. Epub 2020 Mar 30.
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) on mechanically exfoliated 2D layered materials spontaneously produces network patterns of metal oxide nanoparticles in triangular and linear deposits on the basal surface. The network patterns formed under a range of ALD conditions and were independent of the orientation of the substrate in the ALD reactor. The patterns were produced on MoS or HOPG when either tetrakis(dimethylamido)titanium or bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)manganese were used as precursors, suggesting that the phenomenon is general for 2D materials. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the presence, prior to deposition, of dislocation networks along the basal plane of mechanically exfoliated 2D flakes, indicating that periodical basal plane defects related to disruptions in the van der Waals stacking of layers, such as perfect line dislocations and triangular extended stacking faults networks, introduce a surface reactivity landscape that leads to the emergence of patterned deposition.
