LAUSR

Abstract We report a controllable method to synthesize two different morphologies of two dimensional (2D) 1T′-MoTe2 film: rectangular MoTe2 and irregular MoTe2, respectively. The synthesis was carried out via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with sodium chloride (NaCl) as promoters. Our results show that topography of rectangular MoTe2 nanosheets have more uniform thickness while irregular nanosheets have poorer crystallization quality with more grain boundaries. Moreover, the surface friction decreases with the increasing thickness of 2D MoTe2, owing to the gradually decreased surface corrugation of nanosheets as the thickness increase. Our work provides a feasible method to synthesize the challenging transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).