Impact of disorder dynamics and multi-domain kinetics on the sliding ferroelectricity of CVD-grown 3R-WSe₂ bilayers

Sliding ferroelectricity in van der Waals (vdW) layered systems has emerged as a promising route toward non-volatile nanoscale devices, where interlayer displacement in non-centrosymmetric bilayers generates an out-of-plane polarization. In particular, 3R-stacked bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) grown via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have been shown to host such polarization due to broken inversion symmetry. However, a detailed investigation of the 2D ferroelectric (FE) properties of CVD-grown 2D films, particularly on the role of intrinsic disorder, such as structural defects and domain structure, remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the FE switching characteristics of CVD-grown 3R-stacked WSe₂ using a graphene-based ferroelectric field-effect transistor (graphene-FE-FET) architecture, where graphene serves as a highly sensitive probe of induced charge modulation due to polarization switching of FEs. We show that the growth-induced structural disorder significantly impacts polarization switching, while multi-domain kinetics governs the evolution of the FE response. These findings provide important insights into the design and optimization of FE devices based on vdW materials.