Step engineering for nucleation and domain orientation control in WSe2 epitaxy on c-plane sapphire

Epitaxial growth of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) on sapphire has emerged as a promising route to wafer-scale single crystal films. Steps on the sapphire act as sites for TMD nucleation and can impart a preferred domain orientation resulting in a significant reduction in mirror twins. Here we demonstrate control of both the nucleation site and unidirectional growth direction of WSe₂ on c-plane sapphire by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The unidirectional orientation is found to be intimately tied to growth conditions via changes in the sapphire surface chemistry which control the step edge location of WSe₂ nucleation imparting either a 0° or 60° orientation relative to the underlying sapphire lattice. The results provide insight into the role of surface chemistry on TMD nucleation and domain alignment and demonstrate the ability to engineer domain orientation over wafer-scale substrates.