Quantum Confined Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid in Mo6Se6 Nanowires Converted from an Epitaxial MoSe2 Monolayer

Confining interacting particles in one-dimension (1D) changes the electronic behavior of the system fundamentally, which has been studied extensively in the past. Examples of 1D metallic systems include carbon nanotubes, quasi-1D organic conductors, metal chains, and domain boundary defects in monolayer thick transition-metal dichalcogenides such as MoSe. Here single and bundles of MoSe nanowires were fabricated through annealing a MoSe monolayer grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on graphene. Conversion from two-dimensional (2D) MoSe film to 1D MoSe nanowire is reversible. MoSe nanowires form preferentially at the Se-terminated zigzag edges of MoSe and stitch to it via two distinct atomic configurations. The MoSe wire is metallic and its length is tunable, which represents one of few 1D systems that exhibit properties pertinent to quantum confined Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, as evidenced by scanning tunneling microscopic and spectroscopic studies.