Impact of wrinkle orientation on the nanotribological properties of
chemical vapor deposited TMD monolayers using AFM
2D materials are revolutionizing material science, and hold the promise of breakthrough advancements in several applications (e.g. anti-friccion coatings). However, scaling fabrication (e.g. to achieve large, uniform, area coverage) remains one of the main bottlenecks.
For instance, when growing a 2D material from a chemical vapor deposition, it tends to grow from isolated islands (i.e. grains) onto a large film where the grains are connected by defects. These defects tends to be either dislocations, missing atoms, or wrinkles.
It is known that wrinkles in materials like graphene can be "ironed" onto bilayer formations, however, this is not the case for other 2D materials.
Here the authors study the "ironing" of wrinkles in WS2 using an AFM tip and they conclude that unlike graphene, WS2 wrinkles don't transition onto bilayer formations, they instead break under applied load.
Himanshu Rai, Ilia Ponomarev, Deepa Thakur, Viswanath Balakrishnan, Tomas Polcar, Nitya Nand Gosvami, Applied Surface Science, Volume 672, (2024)
