CVD Technology for 2-D Materials

The urgently growing demand for lowering the power consumption and increasing the performance in electronic and optoelectronic systems has been driving the scientific community to explore new materials and device architectures. In light of this, 2-D materials including graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, and transition metal dichalcogenides have the potential to revolutionize our semiconductor industry by scaling the devices down to the atomic level. These materials benefit from several unique properties, endowed by their 2-D nature, such as surface free of dangling bonds, ultimate scaling limit in vertical dimension for almost perfect gate electrostatic control, and strong excitonic effects. However, to realize the full potential of these materials, it is required to develop a large-scale synthesis method. For this, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has shown great promise to synthesize these high-quality 2-D crystals with scalable-production capability. In this review, we will give a brief overview of the current state of the art in CVD growth of 2-D materials and its prospects for next-generation device applications. First, we will review several representative growth techniques in which large area, high quality 2-D materials are demonstrated. We will then describe the status of the development of electronics, optoelectronics, and sensors based on CVD-grown 2-D materials. Finally, we will discuss the major challenges and future opportunities in this rapidly advancing field of research.