A collaborative effort from the center teams at Rice University and USC has studied elastic straining and mechanical damage in transition metal chalcogenide alloys and observed a previously unknown 2H-1T structural phase transformation occurring in the process zone near the crack tip.

In addition to providing fundamental insight into low-dimensional crack growth and toughening mechanisms, it also opens new possibilities for synthesis of 2H-1T lateral heterostructures.

Snapshot of crack propagation trough the lateral MoSe₂-WSe₂ heterostructure shows the formation and growth of the process zone.

Publications

1. Fracture-induced phase transformations in W-alloyed MoSe₂ monolayers. Amey Apte, Vidya Kochat, Chandra Sekhar Tiwari, Pankaj Rajak, Aravind Krishnamoorthy, Rajiv Kalia, Aiichiro Nakano, Priya Vashishta and Pulickel Ajayan. In preparation.

PIs involved in the research

• Rajiv Kalia (USC)
• Pulickel Ajayan (Rice)