Heteroatomic stitching of broken WS2 monolayer with enhanced surface potential

Sub-nanometre thick two-dimensional (2D) materials suffer from severe cracking during the high temperature chemical vapour deposition growth process. The cracking can be utilised to generate more active edges. These active edges can be stitched with a homo- or hetero-material. While the direct growth of 2D-heterostructures is mostly limited to a small fraction of outer edges of monolayer flakes, the cracked monolayers can be utilised to produce a large fraction of heterostructures. Heterostructures are important for developing multifunctional components for nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics. In this work, we demonstrate the formation of WS2-MoS2 heterostructures in large fractions by atomic stitching of cracked WS2 monolayers with the sequential growth of MoS2. Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy have been utillised to probe fine details on the stitched interface between WS2 and MoS2. Growth of MoS2 domains were observed to take place at the terminating edge of cracked WS2, which then merged to form MoS2 multilayers at the cracked site. Growth of MoS2 at the opposite edges of WS2 eventually results in a MoS2-MoS2 junction with a sigma = 7 tilt boundary. Kelvin probe force microscope (KPFM) measurement from the stitched region revealed that the work function of WS2 is similar to 32.46 meV higher than that of MoS2, which also closely matches with the Fermi energy difference between these two materials. With the aid of an atomic force microscope and KPFM, the surface potential width at the stitched region was found to be similar to 5 times higher than the actual width of the interface, confirming the modulation of properties near the interface.