Researchers from Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-authors say they have developed a surface-modification strategy for commercial C/M sapphire that enables robust epitaxy of wafer-scale single-crystalline 2D semiconductors. The work, published in Nature Communications, focuses on monolayer WS2 and MoS2 grown on 2-inch sapphire substrates.
The paper describes a homo-metal-element surface modification approach that uses W/Mo and Al to tailor the sapphire surface before epitaxial growth. According to the abstract excerpt, this modification is intended to support reliable growth of single-crystal 2D materials rather than only small-area flakes or polycrystalline films.
The reported result is a 2-inch-scale monolayer WS2 or MoS2 single-crystal wafer. That places the demonstration at wafer scale, with the substrate and material combination explicitly tied to sapphire-based epitaxy. The source does not provide additional process windows, but it frames the modification as a way to make the sapphire surface more suitable for 2D semiconductor growth.
For the broader 2D materials field, the main point is the combination of commercial sapphire, surface chemistry control, and single-crystal monolayer growth on a wafer-sized substrate. The paper is authored by Jialong Wang, Yihao Zheng, Qingsheng Zeng, Yuhang Jing, You Peng, Tong Zhou, Li Yin, and others.