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Electrostatic-repulsion-based transfer of van der Waals materials

Nature volume 645, pages 906–914 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Van der Waals (vdW) materials offer unique opportunities for 3D integration1,2 of planar circuits towards higher-density transistors and energy-efficient computation3,4,5,6,7. Owing to the high thermal budget and special substrate requirement for the synthesis of high-quality vdW materials8,9,10, an advanced transfer technique is required that can simultaneously meet a broad range of industrial requirements, including high intactness, cleanliness and speed, large scale, low cost and versatility. However, previous efforts based on either etching or etching-free mechanisms typically only improve one or two of the aforementioned aspects11,12,13 and a comprehensive and systematic solution remains lacking. Here we demonstrate an electrostatic-repulsion-enabled advanced transfer technique that is etching free, high yield, fast, wafer scale, low cost and widely applicable, using ammonia solution compatible with the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) industry. The high material intactness and interface cleanliness enable superior device performances in 2D field-effect transistors with 100% yield, near-zero hysteresis (7 mV) and near-ideal subthreshold swing (65.9 mV dec−1). The combination with bismuth contact further enables an ultrahigh on-current of 1.3 mA μm−1 under 1 V bias. This advanced transfer approach offers a facile and manufacturing-viable solution for vdW-materials-based electronics, paving the way for advanced 3D integration in the future.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of EDL transfer, scope of application and key transfer steps.
Fig. 2: Mechanism of EDL transfer and growth substrate reuse.
Fig. 3: Material characterizations of vdW materials after EDL transfer, with KOH transfer as a reference.
Fig. 4: Electrical performance of MoS2 FETs by EDL transfer.

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All data needed to evaluate the conclusions herein are present in the paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S.-M. He, Z. Hennighausen and N. Mao for valuable discussions. We thank Y. F. Liu for helpful discussions about the interface state density of the MoS2 MOS structure. We are grateful for the assistance by B. Reinhard and S. Suman from Boston University in the zeta potential measurement. This work was carried out in part through the use of MIT.nano’s facilities. X. Zheng and J.K. acknowledge the support by the US Army Research Office grant number W911NF2210023. J.W. and J.K. acknowledge the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Multi-University Research Initiative FA9550-22-1-0166. T.Z., J.J., P.W. and J.K. acknowledge the support by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) under award DE-SC0020042 for the synthesis of various 2D materials and electrical characterizations in this work. K.Z. and J.K. acknowledge the support from the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office under contract/grant number W911NF2320057. K.Y.M. and J.K. acknowledge the support from the US Army DEVCOM ARL Army Research Office through the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies under Cooperative Agreement number W911NF-23-2-0121. Z.W., J.K., J.Z. and T.P. acknowledge the support from the Semiconductor Research Corporation Center 7 in JUMP 2.0 (award no. 145105-21913). J.Z. and T.P. are supported in part by the Army Research Office (grant no. W911NF2320057). J.Z. also acknowledges the support from Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (award no. MAS-516952). K.Y.M. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF-2022R1C1C2009666), Republic of Korea. D.-R.C. acknowledges support from National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan (project no. 114-2112-M-033-013-MY3). We acknowledge Nexstrom Pte. Ltd for providing bilayer WSe2. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements of the US Government.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Xudong Zheng, Jiangtao Wang, Jianfeng Jiang

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xudong Zheng, Jiangtao Wang, Jianfeng Jiang, Tianyi Zhang, Jiadi Zhu, Tong Dang, Peng Wu, Ang-Yu Lu, Ding-Rui Chen, Tilo H. Yang, Kenan Zhang, Kyung Yeol Ma, Zhien Wang, Aijia Yao, Vladimir Bulović, Tomás Palacios & Jing Kong

  2. Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ding-Rui Chen & Ya-Ping Hsieh

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xinyuan Zhang & Zhien Wang

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Haomin Liu & Yi Wan

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  1. Xudong Zheng
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Contributions

J.K. supervised the project. X. Zheng, J.W. and J.J. conceived the experiments. J.W. discovered that ammonia solution can be used for fast and clean transfer. X. Zheng developed the method and proposed the EDL mechanism. X. Zheng and J.J. fabricated the devices and performed the electrical measurements. X. Zheng conducted the theoretical computations. X. Zheng, J.W., T.Z., J.Z., A.-Y.L., D.-R.C. and X. Zhang conducted the material characterizations and analysis. J.Z., P.W. and T.H.Y. contributed to the data analysis. T.D. and A.Y. helped with metal depositions. X. Zheng, J.W., T.Z., K.Z., K.Y.M., Z.W., H.L. and Y.W. grew the vdW materials used in this study. T.Z. and J.J. contributed the graphics illustrations. X. Zheng, J.W. and J.K. wrote the manuscript. All authors read and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xudong Zheng, Jiangtao Wang or Jing Kong.

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Competing interests

X. Zheng, J.W. and J.K. are co-inventors on a patent application (provisional filing number no. 63/631,927) related to the research presented in this paper.

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Nature thanks Lain-Jong Li and Henry Medina for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Application of EDL transfer to various substrates.

a, Photos showing the detachment of PMMA from 1 × 1-cm gold foil by EDL transfer, which is not possible by either water or KOH solution. b, Photos or SEM images showing the vdW materials/substrates before and after the transfer and PMMA/substrates before and after being detached. Scale bars from left to right, 1 cm, 10 µm, 5 µm, 1.5 cm, 1.5 cm, 1.5 cm. The top and bottom images in the same column share the same scale bar.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Process flows of EDL transfer and examples.

a–f, Schematics showing the general process flow of EDL transfer. The key step is to detach vdW materials from substrates using EDL repulsion force by simply immersing the vdW materials/substrates into 32 wt% concentrated ammonia solution. The choice of support layer is not restricted in EDL transfer. g, Process flow showing the transfer of 2-inch MoS2 using EDL with only PMMA as the support layer. h, Process flow showing the multilayer stacking of MoS2 using EDL transfer with PDMS as the support layer. Scale bar, 1 cm. The process flow of using TRT + PMMA is similar to that using PDMS. See Methods for more details.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Optical and SEM images of 2-inch MoS2 transferred by EDL.

a, SEM image of the as-grown continuous monolayer MoS2 on SiO2/Si substrate by the MOCVD method. The dark boundaries in the images are grain boundaries of MoS2, which can already be seen on the as-grown MoS2 before transfer. When the MOCVD MoS2 is grown into a continuous monolayer, the bilayer growth first starts at the grain boundary, leading to different contrast in SEM images. Scale bar, 5 μm. b, Photograph showing the transferred MoS2 on a new 4-inch SiO2/Si wafer by EDL. Scale bar, 1 inch. c, Optical microscope images of as-transferred 2-inch continuous monolayer MoS2. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 correspond to the locations on the wafer shown in b. A scratch by tweezers is made at location 1 to distinguish between the substrate and MoS2. Scale bars, 10 μm. d, SEM images of as-transferred 2-inch continuous monolayer MoS2. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 correspond to the location on the wafer shown in b. Scale bars, 5 μm.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Transfer of graphene from copper through EDL.

a–c, Stitching of 25 (5 × 5) optical microscope images of graphene transferred by the EDL method. Before the transfer, the graphene is decoupled from the copper substrate by hydrogen plasma (a), natural oxidation (b) and water oxidation (c). Scale bars, 50 μm. d, Raman spectrum of graphene/Cu before and after the decoupling treatment. The 2D/G ratio increases from 0.52 (black line) to 2.03 (red line) after the decoupling. e,f, Photos of CVD-grown graphene on copper and EDL-transferred graphene on SiO2/Si. Scale bars, 0.5 cm. g, Raman spectrum of transferred graphene on SiO2/Si substrate. h, Correlation study of Raman peak positions (G and 2D) of EDL-transferred graphene. The x and y axes correspond to the peak position of G (ωG) and 2D (ω2D) peaks, respectively. The EDL transfer does not introduce doping or strain to the graphene. i,j, Raman mapping of transferred graphene on SiO2/Si substrate. The plots show the intensity of 2D peak (i) and G peak (j), respectively. Raman excitation wavelength: 532 nm.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Energy and force analysis based on DLVO calculations.

a,b, Energy and force between MoS2 and sapphire in concentrated ammonia solution as a function of separation distance r. The repulsion force is defined to be positive and the attraction force is defined to be negative. The total force is defined as the sum of the attraction and repulsion forces. The parameters used for the plot here are: Γ0 = 101 mJ m−2, r0 = 0.165 nm, LD = 1.37 nm, ψ1 = −60 mV, ψ2 = −40 mV. c,d, Total energy (c) and total force (d) as a function of separation distance r at different pH values of the solution. The parameters used for the plot here are: Γ0 = 101 mJ m−2, r0 = 0.165 nm, LD = 1.37 nm, ψ1 = −60 mV, ψ2 = −40 mV, I = 0.02 mol l−1. e,f, Total energy (e) and total force (f) as a function of separation distance r at different ionic strengths of the solution. The parameters used for the plot here are: Γ0 = 101 mJ m−2, r0 = 0.165 nm, LD = 1.37 nm, ψ1 = −60 mV, ψ2 = −40 mV, pH = 12. g,h, Total energy (g) and total force (h) as a function of separation distance r for vdW materials/substrates with different adhesion energies (Γ0). The parameters used for the plot here are: r0 = 0.165 nm, LD = 1.37 nm, ψ1 = −60 mV, ψ2 = −40 mV, pH = 12, I = 0.02 mol l−1.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Comparison between EDL repulsion and chemical etching: differences in detaching rate and etching rate.

a, Controlled experiment comparing the differences in detaching rate through EDL force versus chemical etching. The two identical PMMA spin-coated SiO2/Si substrates are put into ammonia solution (32 wt%, room temperature) and hot KOH (1 mol l−1, 70 °C). The temperature and concentration of KOH are chosen at the fastest detaching rate (see e). The detachment happens much faster in ammonia solution than in KOH. b, The SiO2 thickness after being immersed in concentrated ammonia solution for an extended amount of time. The thickness is measured using ellipsometry. The error bars come from several ellipsometry measurements of the same piece of substrate. No observable change of thickness is found even after 100 h immersion, indicating no etching effect through EDL transfer. c, The etching rate of SiO2 as a function of ammonia and KOH concentration. The etching rate for KOH is found from the literature81,82, whereas that of the ammonia is measured by ourselves. d, The detaching rate of vdW materials from substrates as a function of ammonia and KOH concentration. e, The detaching rate of vdW materials from substrate as a function of KOH concentration and temperature. Both the z axis and colour bar show the value of detaching rate. The highest detaching rate is found to be approximately 0.1 mm s−1 when the KOH concentration is about 1 mol l−1 and the temperature is roughly 70 °C.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Hysteresis and SS of five short-channel devices and five long-channel devices.

a–e, Transfer curves of five short-channel (Lch = 25 nm) MoS2 FETs at Vds = 0.05 V. The graphs in the second row are the zoomed-in curves of the first row, which show the hysteresis. f–j, Transfer curves of five long-channel (Lch = 1 μm) MoS2 FETs at Vds = 0.05 V. The graphs in the second row are the zoomed-in curves of the first row, which show the hysteresis.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Control experiments comparing EDL transfer with water-based transfer and KOH etching transfer.

a, Transfer characteristic curves (drain current Id versus gate-to-source Vgs) of MoS2 FETs transferred by EDL, H2O and KOH. b, Box plot comparing the on-current (Ion) of MoS2 FETs from a (also shown in Fig. 4f). The average Ion and their standard deviations are 48.4 ± 13.5 μA μm−1 (EDL-MoS2), 38.2 ± 8.2 μA μm−1 (H2O-MoS2) and 4.6 ± 2.5 μA μm−1 (KOH-MoS2), with relatively standard deviation being 27.9%, 21.5% and 54.3%, respectively. c, Box plot comparing the threshold voltage (Vth) of MoS2 FETs from a. The average Vth and standard deviations are 0.8 ± 0.16 V (EDL-MoS2), 1.11 ± 0.19 V (H2O-MoS2) and 0.81 ± 0.27 (KOH-MoS2), with relative standard deviations being 20%, 17% and 33.3%, respectively. d, Transconductances of MoS2 FETs extracted from a. For a–d, fewer data of KOH-MoS2 FETs are presented than EDL-MoS2 and H2O-MoS2. This is because KOH etching causes severe damage, which results in a lower yield.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Further characterization of WSe2 devices and MoS2 MOS structures.

a, Output characteristic of p-type 2D transistor (back gate) using bilayer WSe2 as channel and transferred by the EDL method. b, Surface potential (φs) versus Vg curves from MoS2 MOS structures. c, Surface potential (φs) versus capacitance curves. d, The free carrier density and total carrier density curves of MoS2 MOS structures. e, Contour map of the frequency-normalized parallel conductance as a function of the gate bias and logarithm of the frequency. The amplitudes correspond to the trap density.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Distinguishing between EDL transfer and water-based transfer.

a, Schematic showing the limitation of water-based transfer. b, Optical images showing the as-exfoliated MoS2 on exfoliation substrate before any treatment. c, Optical image of the exfoliation substrate after wafer immersion. No MoS2 is detached, indicating that water cannot detach exfoliated MoS2. d, Optical image of the exfoliation substrate after EDL transfer. The MoS2 is fully detached, indicating that EDL transfer is not based on capillary force. Scale bars, 10 μm.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information (download DOCX )

Supplementary Notes 1–7, Supplementary Tables 1–6, Supplementary Figs. 1–30.

Supplementary Video 1 (download MP4 )

Peeling off WSe2 from sapphire by EDL transfer with TRT plus PMMA as support layer.

Supplementary Video 2 (download MP4 )

Peeling off CNT from quartz by EDL transfer with TRT plus PMMA method.

Supplementary Video 3 (download MP4 )

Transferring large area MoS2 transfer by EDL method with only PMMA as support layer.

Supplementary Video 4 (download MP4 )

Expansion of SiO2 gel in ammonia.

Supplementary Video 5 (download MP4 )

Rinse setup.

Supplementary Video 6 (download MP4 )

Attachment of PMMA-MoS2 onto target SiO2-Si substrate.

Supplementary Video 7 (download MP4 )

Dry removal of PDMS support layer from MoS2 stacking assembled by EDL transfer.

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Zheng, X., Wang, J., Jiang, J. et al. Electrostatic-repulsion-based transfer of van der Waals materials. Nature 645, 906–914 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09510-0

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