Facile growth of large-area and high-quality few-layer ReS2 by physical vapour deposition

As a new two-dimensional semiconductor, rhenium disulfide (ReS2), has lots of distinctive features and exhibits great potential for future novel device applications due to its unusual structure and unique anisotropic properties. In this study, for the first time, large-area few-layer ReS2 has been grown on the SiO2/Si substrate by physical vapour deposition (PVD) using ReS2 powder as source material. XPS and Raman data confirm the composition and bonding configurations of ReS2. Clear lattice fringes of the high-resolution TEM images reveal that the ReS2 is few-layer with highly crystalline quality. It suggests that PVD is promising to synthesize wafer-scale ReS2 film to realize its applications in electronics, optoelectronics, valleytronics and spintronics. The PVD method can be extended to grow other two-dimensional semiconductors with few-layer thickness and high quality.