arXiv subjects

Ze Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Ze Zhang.

53 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Grain Boundaries in Chemical Vapor Deposited Atomically Thin Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Large-area two-dimensional (2D) materials for technical applications can now be produced by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Unfortunately, grain boundaries (GBs) are ubiquitously introduced as a result of the coalescence of grains with different crystallographic orientations. It is well known that the properties of materials largely depend on GB structures. Here, we carried out a systematic study on the GB structures in CVD-grown polycrystalline h-BN monolayer films by transmission electron microscope. Interestingly, most of these GBs are revealed to be formed via overlapping between neighboring grains, which are distinct from the covalently bonded GBs as commonly observed in other 2D materials. Further density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that the hydrogen plays an essential role in overlapping GB formation. This work provides an in-depth understanding of the microstructures and formation mechanisms of GBs in CVD-grown h-BN films, which should be informative in guiding the precisely controlled synthesis of large area single crystalline h-BN and other 2D materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Atomic process of oxidative etching in monolayer molybdenum disulfide

The microscopic process of oxidative etching of two-dimensional molybdenum disulfide (2D MoS2) at an atomic scale is investigated using a correlative TEM-etching study. MoS2 flakes on graphene TEM grids are precisely tracked and characterized by TEM before and after the oxidative etching. This allows us to determine the structural change with an atomic resolution on the edges of the domains, of well-oriented triangular pits and along the grain boundaries. We observe that the etching mostly starts from the open edges, grain boundaries and pre-existing atomic defects. A zigzag Mo edge is assigned as the dominant termination of the triangular pits, and profound terraces and grooves are observed on the etched edges. Based on the statistical TEM analysis, we reveal possible routes for the kinetics of the oxidative etching in 2D MoS2, which should also be applicable for other 2D transition metal dichalcogenide materials like MoSe2 and WS2.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

In-situ fabrication of Mo6S6 nanowire terminated edges in monolayer molybdenum disulfide

Edge structures are highly relevant to the electronic, magnetic and catalytic properties of two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and their one dimensional (1D) counterpart, i.e., nanoribbons, which should be precisely tailored for the desirable applications. In this work, we report the formation of novel Mo6S6 nanowire (NW) terminated edges in a monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) via an e-beam irradiation process combined with high temperature heating in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). Atomic structures of NW terminated edges and the dynamic formation process were observed experimentally. Further analysis shows that NW terminated edge could form on both Mo-zigzag (ZZ) edge and S-ZZ edge which can exhibit even higher stability superior to the pristine zigzag (ZZ) and armchair (AC) edge. In addition, the analogous edge structures can be also formed in MoS2 nanoribbon and other TMDs material such as MoxW1-xSe2. We believe that the presence of these novel edge structures in 2D and 1D TMD materials may provide novel properties and new opportunities for their versatile applications including catalytic, spintronic and electronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Inversion Domain Boundary Induced Stacking and Bandstructure Diversity in Bilayer MoSe2

Interlayer rotation and stacking were recently demonstrated as effective strategies for tuning physical properties of various two-dimensional materials. The latter strategy was mostly realized in hetero-structures with continuously varied stacking orders, which obscure the revelation of the intrinsic role of a certain stacking order in its physical properties. Here, we introduce inversion-domain-boundaries into molecular-beam-epitaxy grown MoSe2 homo-bilayers, which induce unusual-fractional lattice translations to their surrounding domains, accounting for the observed diversity of large-area and uniform stacking sequences. Unusual low-symmetric stacking orders were observed using transmission electron microscopy and detailed geometries were identified by density functional theory. A linear relation was also revealed between interlayer distance and stacking energy. These stacking sequences yield various energy alignments between the valence states at Γ and K, showing stacking dependent bandgaps and valence band tail states in the measured scanning tunneling spectroscopy. These results may benefit the design of two-dimensional multilayers with manipulable stacking orders.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Evaluating the electron density model by applying an imaginary modification

A function has been proposed to evaluate the electron density model constructed by inverse Fourier transform using the observed structure amplitudes and trial phase set. The strategy of this function is applying an imaginary electron density modification to the model, and then measuring how well the calculated structure amplitudes of the modified model matches the expected structure amplitudes for the modified correct model. Since the correct model is not available in advance, a method has been developed to estimate the structure amplitudes of the modified correct model. With the estimated structure amplitudes of the modified correct model, the evaluation function can be calculated approximately. Limited tests on simulated diffraction data indicate that this evaluation function may be valid at the data resolution better than 2.5 Å.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Direct identification of monolayer rhenium diselenide by an individual diffraction pattern

In the current extensive studies of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), compared to hexagonal layered materials, like graphene, hBN and MoS2, low symmetry layered 2D crystals showed great potential for applications in anisotropic devices. Rhenium diselenide (ReSe2) has the bulk space group P1 and belongs to triclinic crystal system with a deformed cadmium iodide type structure. Here we unambiguously determined monolayer and its vertical orientation of rhenium diselenide membrane with an individual electron diffraction pattern, which could be applicable to low symmetry crystal systems, including both triclinic and monoclinic lattices, as long as their third unit-cell basis vector is not perpendicular to basal plane. Atomically resolved image from probe corrected annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscope (ADF-STEM) was employed to validate layer number. Finally, experimental results were well explained by kinematical electron diffraction theory and corresponding simulations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Chemical-disorder-caused Medium Range Order in Covalent Glass

How atoms in covalent solids rearrange over a medium-range length-scale during amorphization is a long pursued question whose answer could profoundly shape our understanding on amorphous (a-) networks. Based on ab-intio calculations and reverse Monte Carlo simulations of experiments, we surprisingly find that even though the severe chemical disorder in a-GeTe undermined the prevailing medium range order (MRO) picture, it is responsible for the experimentally observed MRO. That this thing could happen depends on a novel atomic packing scheme. And this scheme results in a kind of homopolar bond chain-like polyhedral clusters. Within this scheme, the formation of homopolar bonds can be well explained by an electron-counting model and further validated by quantitative bond energy analysis based. Our study suggests that the underlying physics for chemical disorder in a-GeTe is intrinsic and universal to all severely chemically disordered covalent glasses.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

The Tian Pseudo-Atom Method

In this work, the authors give a new method for phase determination, the Tian pseudo atom method (TPAM) or pseudo atom method (PAM) for short. In this new method, the figure of merit function, Rtian, replaces Rcf in the charge flipping algorithm. The key difference between Rcf and Rtian is the oberved structure factor was replaced by the pseudo structure factor. The test results show that Rtian is more powerful and robust than Rcf to estimate the correct structure especially with low resolution data. Therefore, the pseudo atom method could overcome the charge flipping method's defeat to some extent. In theory, the pseudo atom method could deal with quite low resolution data but it needs a further test.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Capture the growth kinetics of CVD growth of two-dimensional MoS2

Understanding the microscopic mechanism of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of two-dimensional molybdenum disulfide (2D MoS2) is a fundamental issue towards the function-oriented controlled growth. In this work, we report results on revealing the growth kinetics of 2D MoS2 via capturing the nucleation seed, evolution morphology, edge structure and terminations at the atomic scale during CVD growth using the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) studies. The direct growth of few- and mono-layer MoS2 onto graphene based TEM grids allow us to perform the subsequent TEM characterization without any solution-based transfer. Two forms of seeding centers are observed during characterizations: (i) Mo-oxysulfide (MoOxS2-y) nanoparticles either in multi-shelled fullerene-like structures or in compact nanocrystals for the growth of fewer-layer MoS2; (ii) Mo-S atomic clusters in case of monolayer MoS2. In particular, for the monolayer case, at the early stage growth, the morphology appears in irregular polygon shape comprised with two primary edge terminations: S-Mo Klein edge and Mo zigzag edge, approximately in equal numbers, while as the growth proceeds, the morphology further evolves into near-triangle shape in which Mo zigzag edge predominates. Results from density-functional theory calculations are also consistent with the inferred growth kinetics, and thus supportive to the growth mechanism we proposed. In general, the growth mechanisms found here should also be applicable in other 2D materials, such as MoSe2, WS2 and WSe2 etc.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Deriving phosphorus atomic chain from few-layer black phosphorus

Phosphorus atomic chains, the utmost-narrow nanostructures of black phosphorus (BP), are highly relevant to the in-depth development of BP into one-dimensional (1D) regime. In this contribution, we report a top-down route to prepare atomic chains of BP via electron beam sculpting inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The growth and dynamics (i.e. rupture and edge migration) of 1D phosphorus chains are experimentally captured for the first time. Furthermore, the dynamic behaviors and associated energetics of the as-formed phosphorus chains are further corroborated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The 1D counterpart of BP will serve as a novel platform and inspire further exploration of the versatile properties of BP.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2015

Nanoscale Origins of the Damage Tolerance of the High-Entropy Alloy CrMnFeCoNi

Damage-tolerance can be an elusive characteristic of structural materials requiring both high strength and ductility, properties that are often mutually exclusive. High-entropy alloys are of interest in this regard. Specifically, the single-phase CrMnFeCoNi alloy displays tensile strength levels of ~1 GPa, excellent ductility (~60-70%) and exceptional fracture toughness (KJIc > 200 MPa/m). Here, through the use of in-situ straining in an aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope, we report on the salient atomistic to micro-scale mechanisms underlying the origin of these properties. We identify a synergy of multiple deformation mechanisms, rarely achieved in metallic alloys, which generates high strength, work hardening and ductility, including the easy motion of Shockley partials, their interactions to form stacking-fault parallelepipeds, and arrest at planar-slip bands of undissociated dislocations. We further show that crack propagation is impeded by twinned, nano-scale bridges that form between the near-tip crack faces and delay fracture by shielding the crack tip.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2015

Probing the anisotropic behaviors of black phosphorus by transmission electron microscope, angular-dependent Raman spectra and electronic transports measurements

In this work, we correlated the angular dependence of the Raman response of black phosphorus to its crystallographic orientation by using transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. It was found that the intensity of the A2g mode reached a maximum when the polarization direction of the incident light was parallel to the zigzag crystallographic orientation. Notably, it was further confirmed that the zigzag crystallographic direction exhibited superior conductance and carrier mobility. Because of the lattice extension along the armchair direction, an intensification of the anisotropic Raman response was observed. This work provides direct evidence of the correlation between anisotropic properties and crystallographic direction and represents a turning point in the discussion of the angular-dependent electronic properties of black phosphorus.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2015

Image definition evaluation functions for X-ray crystallography: a new perspective on the phase problem

The core theme of X-ray crystallography is reconstructing the electron density distribution of crystals under the constraints of observed diffraction data. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of electron density distribution by straightforward Fourier synthesis is usually hindered due to the well-known phase problem and finite resolution of diffraction data. In analogy with optical imaging system, the reconstructed electron density map may be regarded as the image of the real electron density distribution in crystals. Inspired by image definition evaluation functions applied in auto-focusing process, we proposed two evaluation functions for the reconstructed electron density images. One of them is based on atomicity of electron density distribution and properties of Fourier synthesis. Tests were performed on synthetic data of known structures, and it was found that this evaluation function can distinguish the correctly reconstructed electron density image from wrong ones when diffraction data of atomic resolution is available. An algorithm was established based on this evaluation function and applied in reconstructing the electron density image from synthetic data of known structures. The other evaluation function, which is based on the positivity of electron density and constrained entropy maximization, was designed for cases where only diffraction data of rather limited resolution is available. Tests on synthetic data indicate that this evaluation function may identify the correct phase set even for a dataset at the resolution as low as 3.5 Å. Though no algorithm of structure solution has been figured out based on the latter function, the results presented here provide a new perspective on the phase problem.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2014

Dimensional cross-over of the bandgap transition in quasi-two-dimensional MoS2

The anisotropy of the electronic transition is an important physical property not only determining the materials' optical property, but also revealing the underlying character of the electronic states involved. Here we used momentum-resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopy to study the evolution of the anisotropy of the electronic transition involving the low energy valence electrons in the free-standing MoS2 systems as the layer thickness was reduced to monolayer. We used the orientation and the spectral-density analysis to show that indirect to direct band-gap transition is accompanied by a three- to two-dimensional anisotropy cross-over. The result provides a logical explanation for the large sensitivity of indirect transition to the change of thickness compared with that for direct transition. By tracking the energy of indirect transition, we also revealed the asymmetric response of the valence band and conduction band to the quantum confinement effect. Our results have implication for future optoelectronic applications of atomic thin MoS2.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2014

Plasma-assisted fabrication of monolayer phosphorene and its Raman characterization

There have been continuous efforts to seek for novel functional two-dimensional semiconductors with high performance for future applications in nanoelectronics and optoelectronics. In this work, we introduce a successful experimental approach to fabricate monolayer phosphorene by mechanical cleavage and the following Ar+ plasma thinning process. The thickness of phosphorene is unambiguously determined by optical contrast combined with atomic force microscope (AFM). Raman spectroscopy is used to characterize the pristine and plasma-treated samples. The Raman frequency of A2g mode stiffens, and the intensity ratio of A2g to A1g modes shows monotonic discrete increase with the decrease of phosphorene thickness down to monolayer. All those phenomena can be used to identify the thickness of this novel two-dimensional semiconductor efficiently. This work for monolayer phosphorene fabrication and thickness determination will facilitates the research of phosphorene.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2013

Engineered optical nonlinearities and enhanced light transmission in soft-matter systems with tunable polarizabilities

In this work, we demonstrate that the nonlinear response of certain soft-matter systems can be tailored at will by appropriately engineering their optical polarizability. In particular, we deliberately synthesize stable colloidal suspensions with negative polarizabilities, and observe for the first time robust propagation and enhanced transmission of self-trapped light over long distances that would have been otherwise impossible in conventional suspensions with positive polarizabilities. What greatly facilitates this behavior is an induced saturable nonlinear optical response introduced by the thermodynamic properties of these colloidal systems. This in turn leads to a substantial reduction in scattering via self-activated transparency effects. Our results may open up new opportunities in developing soft-matter systems with tunable optical nonlinearities.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2008

Ni/Ni3C Core-Shell Nanochains and Its Magnetic Properties: One-Step Synthesis at low temperature

One-dimensional Ni/Ni3C core-shell nanoball chains with an average diameter by around 30 nm were synthesized by means of a mild chemical solution method using a soft template of trioctylphosphineoxide (TOPO). It was revealed that the uniform Ni nanochains were capped with Ni3C thin shells by about 1 to 4 nm in thickness and each Ni core consists of polygrains. The coercivity of the core-shell nanochains is much enhanced (600 Oe at 5 K) and comparable with single Ni nanowires due to the one-dimensional shape anisotropy. Deriving from the distinctive structure of Ni core and Ni3C shell, this architecture may possess a possible bi-functionality. This unique architecture is also useful for the study on the magnetization reversal mechanism of one-dimensional magnetic nanostructure.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗