Characterization of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenide at the atomic scale

Edge structures and atomic defects are of fundamental importance since they can significantly affect the physical and chemical properties of low-dimensional materials, such as nanoribbons, and therefore merit thorough investigations at the atomic level. Recent developments of direct imaging and analytical techniques using an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) have provided direct access to information on the local atomic structure and the chemical composition at the atomic scale. In this review, we report on the discrimination of single atoms including dopant atoms on a monolayered transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanoribbon and a single nitrogen adatom on graphene by time-resolved annular dark-field (ADF) imaging and spatially resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). We also show that in situ scanning transmission electron microscopy can be used to monitor the structural transformation between semiconducting (2H) and metallic (1T) phases in monolayer MoS₂, and can enable direct observation of in-plane graphene growth at a step edge of a bi-layer graphene and domain boundary formation during growth with atomic-resolution.