Large Scale Nanomanufacturing of Novel Inhomogeneous Strained Two-Dimensional Materials with Tunable Electronic and Optical Properties

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The application of two-dimensional atomic layer crystals opens wide opportunity to realize novel electronic, thermal and optical properties that may enable new electronic and photonic devices and significantly improve the efficiency and performance of current devices. However, these two-dimensional materials have limited tunability and therefore provide insufficient benefits to their potential applications. Bandgap opening and tuning is essential to fully exploit the unprecedented electronics properties. This award supports fundamental research to provide the needed knowledge for a scalable nanomanufacturing technique, namely laser shock-based nano-straining engineering. Such a method will generate tunable electrical and optical behavior in the two-dimensional crystals by applying an inhomogeneous three-dimensional strain patterns. This new technique will enable a novel large scale three-dimensional strain engineering and parallel manufacturing process of the two-dimensional crystals to achieve a wide range of tunable electronic and optical functionalities for a variety of device applications. The results of the research will be used to develop new coursework. The project will encourage students of various backgrounds to participate in the research and demonstrations. This project will build a solid science base for design and manufacturing of a quasi-three dimensional, non-planar-strained nano-architecture out of the two-dimensional atomic layer materials with tunable electrical and optical properties. The award will specifically focus on graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2. However, there are several scientific barriers to overcome in order to realize the benefits of this novel quasi-three-dimensional straining technique. The research team aims to fill the gaps by studying the effects of processing conditions on nanoscale straining of the two-dimensional crystals with molecular dynamics simulation and experiments, and determine the relationship between the inhomogeneous strain-engineered two-dimensional crystals and their electrical and optical properties. This research is the first experimental attempt in nanoscale strain-engineering of two-dimensional materials for tuning their functionalities.