Intercalation-Induced Disintegrated Layer-by-Layer Growth of Ultrathin Ternary Mo(Te1-xSx)2 Plates.

Nanometer-thick transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted increasing research interest due to their exotic physical properties, but their high-yield and large-scale synthesis remains a challenge for their practical device applications. In this study, we realize the high-yield synthesis of nanometer-thick single-crystalline Mo(Te1-xSx)2 plates by a facile chemical vapour deposition method. The added S powders in precursors can result in the products varying from well-faceted MoTe2 hexagonal plates to irregular Mo(Te1-xSx)2 plates with randomly stacked nanometer-thick layer steps. Moreover, their lateral dimension increases from several m for binary MoTe2 to several tens of m for ternary Mo(Te1-xSx)2. More interestingly, such irregular Mo(Te1-xSx)2 plates can form few layers by ultrasonic exfoliation. Our detailed electron microscopy analyses show that three kinds of S forms influence the ternary growth. In particular, elemental S8 intercalations play an important role in the growth and exfoliation of ultrathin Mo(Te1-xSx)2 plates. This study enriches the fundamental understanding of zero-valent intercalation in transition metal dichalcogenides and provides a new insight for secure high-yield nanometer-thick transition metal dichalcogenides, which is critical for practical applications.