Room Temperature Semiconductor-Metal Transition of MoTe2 Thin Films Engineered by Strain.

Song, Seunghyun; Keum, Dong Hoon; Cho, Suyeon; Perello, David; Kim, Yunseok; Lee, Young Hee · Nano Lett · 2016

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We demonstrate a room temperature semiconductor-metal transition in thin film MoTe2 engineered by strain. Reduction of the 2H-1T' phase transition temperature of MoTe2 to room temperature was realized by introducing a tensile strain of 0.2%. The observed first-order SM transition improved conductance ∼10 000 times and was made possible by an unusually large temperature-stress coefficient, which results from a large volume change and small latent heat. The demonstrated strain-modulation of the phase transition temperature is expected to be compatible with other TMDs enabling the 2D electronics utilizing polymorphism of TMDs along with the established materials.