MXenes, carbides, nitrides and carbonitrides of early transition metals are the new members of two dimensional materials family given with a formula of M n + 1 X _n . Recent advances in chemical exfoliation and CVD growth of these crystals together with their promising performance in electrochemical energy storage systems have triggered the interest in these two dimensional structures. In this work, we employ first principles calculations for n = 1 structures of Sc, Ti, Zr, Mo and Hf pristine MXenes and their fully surface terminated forms with F and O. We systematically investigated the dynamical and mechanical stability of both pristine and fully terminated MXene structures to determine the possible MXene candidates for experimental realization. In conjunction with an extensive stability analysis, we report Raman and infrared active mode frequencies for the first time, providing indispensable information for the experimental elaboration of MXene field. After determining dynamically stable MXenes, we provide their phonon dispersion relations, electronic and mechanical properties.

Single-layer, large-scale two-dimensional material growth is still a challenge for their wide-range usage. Therefore, we carried out a comprehensive study of monolayer MoS ₂ growth by CVD investigating the influence of growth zone configuration and precursors ratio. We first compared the two commonly used approaches regarding the relative substrate and precursor positions, namely, horizontal and face-down configurations where face-down approach is found to be more favorable to obtain larger flakes under identical growth conditions. Secondly, we used different types of substrate holders to investigate the influence of the Mo and S vapor confinement on the resulting diffusion environment. We suggest that local changes of the S to Mo vapor ratio in the growth zone is a key factor for the change of shape, size and uniformity of the resulting MoS ₂ formations, which is also confirmed by performing depositions under different precursor ratios. Therefore, to obtain continuous monolayer films, the S to Mo vapor ratio is needed to be kept within a certain range throughout the substrate. As a conclusion, we obtained monolayer triangles with a side length of 90 µm and circles with a diameter of 500 µm and continuous films with an area of 850 µm × 1 cm when the S-to-Mo vapor ratio is optimized.