Tunable thermal expansion coefficient of transition-metal dichalcogenide lateral heterostructures

The thermal expansion effect plays an important role in governing the thermal stability or the stable configuration of quasi-two-dimensional atomic layers, where the difference between the thermal expansion coefficient of different kinds of atomic layer in lateral heterostructure may cause strong thermal rippling of the atomic layer. We investigate the thermal expansion phenomenon in the WSe2-MoS2 lateral heterostructure. We find that the thermal expansion coefficient can be enhanced by more than a factor of two via varying the ratio between the WSe2 and MoS2 components in the heterostructure. The underlying mechanism is disclosed to be the buckling of the WSe2 region that is induced by the misfit strain at the coherent interface between WSe2 and MoS2. These findings shall be helpful in handling the thermal stability of functional devices based on the transition-metal dichalcogenide lateral heterostructures and other similar quasi-two-dimensional lateral heterostructures.