Millimeter-Scale Single-Crystal α-MoO₃ Nanosheets Grown by Alkali Salt-Assisted Chemical Vapor Deposition.

Abstract

The orthorhombic van der Waals (vdW) layered crystal α-MoO₃ is a promising material for infrared nanophotonics; in particular, it may host highly confined hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) with wavelength-dependent in-plane anisotropy. However, large-area and uniform single crystals are challenging to grow on substrates, as current α-MoO₃ growth methods struggle to manage adverse tendencies in size, texturing, and roughness. In this work, we establish an alkali salt-assisted chemical vapor deposition (SA-CVD) growth technique to produce smooth, high-quality, and millimeter-scale single-crystal α-MoO₃ nanosheets directly on A-plane sapphire substrates. By cosublimating a NaCl source along with α-MoO₃ during growth, we overcome the size and morphology challenges typical of alkali-free deposition, achieving ultrasmooth crystals with lateral dimensions reaching 6 mm and thicknesses ranging from <6 to 480 nm. We attribute the improved morphology to a molten Na₂O-MoO₃ intermediate, which forms on the substrate surface and induces a self-expanding vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth mode. The as-grown single-crystal nanosheets exhibit high crystal and optical quality without evident degradation by residual Na, enabling characteristically high HPhP quality (Q) factors (12-30) and long lifetimes (2.7-7.7 ps) as measured by scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM). We relocate the large-area crystals onto arbitrary substrates using a water-assisted layer transfer technique, which effectively removes Na-containing residue and relieves residual strain. This work unlocks millimeter-scale, high-quality, uniform α-MoO₃ single-crystal growth directly on substrates for large-area implementation in fields including mid-infrared nanophotonics and layered vdW heterostructures.