Crystalline two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors often combine high elasticity and in-plane strength, making them ideal for strain-induced tuning of electronic characteristics, akin to strategies used in silicon electronics. However, existing techniques have not achieved strain in 2D materials that is simultaneously high in magnitude (>1%), stable over long periods, and spatially programmable, meaning the strain level can be deterministically engineered across different regions of a single 2D layer. Here, we apply spatially programmable biaxial strain (e_b) up to 2.2% with spatial resolution of 0.13 %e_b um-1 in monolayer MoS2 via conformal transfer onto patterned substrates fabricated using two-photon lithography. The induced strain is stable for months and enables local band gap tuning of ~0.4 eV in monolayer MoS2, ~25% of its intrinsic band gap. We further extend the approach to bilayer WS2-MoS2 heterostructures. This strain-engineering technique introduces a new regime of strain-enabled control in 2D semiconductors to support the development of wide-spectrum optoelectronic devices and nanoelectronics with engineered electronic landscapes.
@article{arxiv.2508.00972,
title = {High-magnitude, spatially programmable, and sustained strain engineering of 2D semiconductors},
author = {Boran Kumral and Pedro Guerra Demingos and Peter Serles and Shuo Yang and Da Bin Kim and Dian Yu and Akhil Nair and Akshat Rastogi and Nima Barri and Md Akibul Islam and Jane Howe and Cristina H Amon and Sjoerd Hoogland and Edward H. Sargent and Chandra Veer Singh and Tobin Filleter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00972},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
25 pages of main text with 6 figures and 35 pages of supplementary information with 22 figures