Developing transition metal dichalcogenide alloys for applications to integrated photonics

We explore the potential of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as phase-change materials for photonics integrated circuits (PIC). We measure the near-infrared (NIR) optical properties of bulk crystal telluride TMDs and sulfide TMDs. We find that telluride TMDs have large optical density and large optical contrast, but the loss is too high. The sulfide TMDs have lower loss, but the phase change energy is much higher. We further propose designing sulfide TMD alloys that are thermodynamically adjacent to phase boundaries between competing crystal structures, to realize martensitic (i.e., displacive, order-order) switching. We report large-area thin film synthesis of 1T TiS₂ and high-Ti-content, single-phase 2H alloy Mo₁₋ₓTiₓS₂ thin films at temperature as low as 500 °C using a scalable two-step method of metal film deposition, followed by sulfurization in an H₂S gas furnace. We demonstrate different roughening processes for each case and optimize the morphology.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Li, Yifei

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Jaramillo, Rafael
• Li, Ju

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150439

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/150439