Synthesis of 1T-Tantalum (IV) Sulfide and observation of charge density wave using scanning tunneling microscopy

Abstract

Over the past decade, due to the increasing interest and urgency in finding an alternate material system for post-silicon logic and opto-electronic applications, staggering progress have been made in the study of low-dimensional materials. These low-dimensional materials not only help reduce transistor footprint and improve power and performance metrics, they also exhibit very peculiar electrical properties. A particular example is the existence of a charge density wave (CDW) in 1T-Tantalum (IV) Sulfide (1T-TaS2). A member of the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) family, 1T-TaS2 exhibit a periodic modulation of electronic charge density. Unlike bulk semiconductor or metals, lattice distortion in this low-dimensional material creates non-uniform, wave-like electron densities. In this thesis, we have demonstrated two bulk material growth strategies for the synthesis of 1T-TaS2. We have successfully grown poly-crystalline 1T-TaS2 powder through a direct solid-solid reaction and single-crystals of 1T-TaS2 through Iodine-assisted chemical vapor transport (CVT). After a few growth setup revisions, the growth processes have given consistently high yields. Next, we performed an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy (UHV-STM) study of the grown poly-crystalline 1T-TaS2. The powder was deposited onto an atomically flat, H-passivated silicon substrate using dry contact transfer (DCT), an in-situ deposition technique developed by the Lyding group for clean, UHV-compatible transfer of nano-materials. We managed to directly observe room-temperature CDW on the deposited nano-flakes of 1T-TaS2. The periodicity of the CDW lat- tice correspond very closely to the expected sqrt(13) x sqrt(13) nearly commensurate room-temperature CDW phase.