Micrometer-scale WS 2 atomic layers grown by alkali metal free gas-source chemical vapor deposition with H 2 S and WF 6 precursors

Abstract Scalable chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of two-dimensional semiconducting materials such as MoS 2 and WS 2 is a key technology for the application of these materials in real devices. In this work, we demonstrate the growth behavior of WS 2 crystals from gaseous precursors, i.e. H 2 S and WF 6 , under alkali-metal-free conditions. The WS 2 crystal growth exhibits layer-by-layer growth, and its behaviors, such as nucleation and lateral growth, are a thermally activated process: the temperature-dependent grain size and density are well fitted by the Arrhenius equation. The obtained WS 2 crystal shows quality comparable to that obtained from metal oxides: the WS 2 film shows sharp photoluminescence with a peak width of 54 meV and n -type field-effect transistor operation. Optimizing the growth conditions enabled us to obtain WS 2 crystals with a grain size of ∼1.5 μ m, which is the largest size ever reported for a transition-metal dichalcogenide grown by gas-source CVD without an alkali-metal promotor.