Dative Epitaxy of Heterostructures

Van der Waals 2D heterostructures provide unprecedented opportunities to realize multifunctionality and emergent phenomena. However, most such heterostructures were realized by exfoliation and restacking. This leads to challenges in interface control and puts limitations on scaling up for practical applications. 2D heterostructures have also been realized by chemical and physical vapor deposition techniques. Recently, an unconventional dative epitaxy has been discovered in CVD grown Cr5Te8/WSe2 heterostructures, where Cr5Te8 is a covalent 2D magnet and WSe2 is a vdW semiconductor. Continuing this line of work, we show that a variety of 2D/2D, 3D/2D heterostructures can be epitaxially grown, with combinations of semiconducting, magnetic, and superconducting properties. Our approach opens up an avenue for realizing new heterostructures with high quality interface for exploration of new phenomena and applications.