• 文献标题:   Forces and electronic transport in a contact formed by a graphene tip and a defective MoS2 monolayer: a theoretical study
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   DI FELICE D, DAPPE YJ, GONZALEZ C
  • 作者关键词:   ncafm, graphene tip, dft, electronic transport, mos2 defect
  • 出版物名称:   NANOTECHNOLOGY
  • ISSN:   0957-4484 EI 1361-6528
  • 通讯作者地址:   Univ Granada
  • 被引频次:   0
  • DOI:   10.1088/1361-6528/aab5fc
  • 出版年:   2018

▎ 摘  要

A theoretical study of a graphene-like tip used in atomic force microscopy (AFM) is presented. Based on first principles simulations, we proved the low reactivity of this kind of tip, using a MoS2 monolayer as the testing sample. Our simulations show that the tip-MoS2 interaction is mediated through weak van der Waals forces. Even on the defective monolayer, the interaction is reduced by one order of magnitude with respect to the values obtained using a highly reactive metallic tip. On the pristine monolayer, the S atoms were imaged for large distances together with the substitutional defects which should be observed as brighter spots in non-contact AFM measurements. This result is in contradiction with previous simulations performed with Cu or Si tips where the metallic defects were imaged for much larger distances than the S atoms. For shorter distances, the Mo sites will be brighter even though a vacancy is formed. On the other hand, the largest conductance value is obtained over the defect formed by two Mo atoms occupying a S divacancy when the half-occupied py-states of the graphene-like tip find a better coupling with d-orbitals of the highest substitutional atom. Due to the weak interaction, no conductance plateau is formed in any of the sites. A great advantage of this tip lies in the absence of atomic transfer between the tip and the sample leading to a more stable AFM measurement. Finally, and as previously shown, we confirm the atomic resolution in a scanning tunneling microscopy simulation using this graphene-based tip.