(Invited) Excellent Wetting Behavior of Yttria on 2D Materials

A high quality yttrium oxide (yttria, Y2O3) dielectric has been grown on different carbon derivatives materials (carbon nanotubes, exfoliated graphene, chemical vapor deposition graphene).1-5 This opens the possibility to use such dielectric for the fabrication of graphene devices.4-5 In this talk, the good wettability of Y2O3 on graphene is demonstrated using various surface science methods. Furthermore, the favorable wetting behavior of yttria is exploited as an effective seeding layer for atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 on graphene.6 Moreover, we investigated the interface between Y2O3 and the transition metal dichalcogenide MoS2 as well as on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). The growth of the yttria film was monitored in-situ by monochromatic X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy (XPS and STM). Depositing yttrium metal results in a chemical interaction between the adlayer and the substrate. However, no indication of chemical interaction was detected for the Y2O3 growth, formed by evaporating yttrium in background O2 environment. This is due to the initial formation of Y-O bonds, before the weak Y-MoS2 and Y-C interaction occurs. The STM results indicate the formation of a uniform dielectric film on both MoS2 and HOPG surfaces, confirming the previous findings on graphene. In conclusions, our results reveal that the underlying MoS2and graphene remains intact following yttria seed deposition. Photoemission measurements of the graphene/oxide contacts indicate n-type doping of graphene with different doping levels caused by the charge transfer at the interfaces. This work was supported in part by the Southwest Academy on Nanoelectronics sponsored by the Nanoelectronic Research Initiative. -- [1] R. Addou, A. Dahal, and M. Batzill Growth of a Two-Dimensional Dielectric Monolayer on Quasi-Freestanding Graphene. Nature Nanotechnol. 8, 41-45 (2013). [2] A. Dahal, H. Coy-Diaz H, R. Addou, J. Lallo, E. Sutter, and M. Batzill Preparation and Characterization of Ni(111)/Graphene/Y2O3(111) Heterostructures. J. Appl. Phys. 113, 194305 (2013). [3] A. Dahal, R. Addou, H. Coy-Diaz, J. Lallo, and M. Batzill. Charge Doping of Graphene in Metal/Graphene/Dielectric Sandwich Structure Evaluated by C-1s Core Level Photoemission Spectroscopy. APL Mater. 1, 042107 (2013). [4] H. Xu, Z. Zhang, Z. Wang, S. Wang, X. Liang, and L. M. Peng Quantum capacitance limited vertical scaling of graphene field- effect transistor. ACS Nano 5, 2340–2347 (2011). [5] H. Xu,  Z. Zhang, H. Xu, Z. Wang, S. Wang, and L. M. Peng Top-gated graphene field-effect transistors with high normalized transconductance and designable Dirac point voltage. ACS Nano 5, 5031–5037 (2011). [6] A. Dahal, R. Addou, A. Azcatl, H. Coy-Diaz, N. Lu, X. Peng, F. de Dios, J. Kim, M. J. Kim, R. M. Wallace, and M. Batzill. Seeding Atomic Layer Deposition of Alumina on Graphene with Yttria. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 7, 2082-2087 (2015).