RESUMO
Two-dimensional semiconductors such as MoS2 are an emerging material family with wide-ranging potential applications in electronics, optoelectronics, and energy harvesting. Large-area growth methods are needed to open the way to applications. Control over lattice orientation during growth remains a challenge. This is needed to minimize or even avoid the formation of grain boundaries, detrimental to electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of MoS2 and other 2D semiconductors. Here, we report on the growth of high-quality monolayer MoS2 with control over lattice orientation. We show that the monolayer film is composed of coalescing single islands with limited numbers of lattice orientation due to an epitaxial growth mechanism. Optical absorbance spectra acquired over large areas show significant absorbance in the high-energy part of the spectrum, indicating that MoS2 could also be interesting for harvesting this region of the solar spectrum and fabrication of UV-sensitive photodetectors. Even though the interaction between the growth substrate and MoS2 is strong enough to induce lattice alignment via van der Waals interaction, we can easily transfer the grown material and fabricate devices. Local potential mapping along channels in field-effect transistors shows that the single-crystal MoS2 grains in our film are well connected, with interfaces that do not degrade the electrical conductivity. This is also confirmed by the relatively large and length-independent mobility in devices with a channel length reaching 80 µm.
RESUMO
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a new type of materials under intense study because of their interesting physical properties and wide range of potential applications from nanoelectronics to sensing and photonics. Monolayers of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2 or WSe2 have been proposed as promising channel materials for field-effect transistors. Their high mechanical flexibility, stability, and quality coupled with potentially inexpensive production methods offer potential advantages compared to organic and crystalline bulk semiconductors. Due to quantum mechanical confinement, the band gap in monolayer MoS2 is direct in nature, leading to a strong interaction with light that can be exploited for building phototransistors and ultrasensitive photodetectors. Here, we report on the realization of light-emitting diodes based on vertical heterojunctions composed of n-type monolayer MoS2 and p-type silicon. Careful interface engineering allows us to realize diodes showing rectification and light emission from the entire surface of the heterojunction. Electroluminescence spectra show clear signs of direct excitons related to the optical transitions between the conduction and valence bands. Our p-n diodes can also operate as solar cells, with typical external quantum efficiency exceeding 4%. Our work opens up the way to more sophisticated optoelectronic devices such as lasers and heterostructure solar cells based on hybrids of 2D semiconductors and silicon.
RESUMO
Two-dimensional materials are an emerging class of new materials with a wide range of electrical properties and potential practical applications. Although graphene is the most well-studied two-dimensional material, single layers of other materials, such as insulating BN (ref. 2) and semiconducting MoS2 (refs 3, 4) or WSe2 (refs 5, 6), are gaining increasing attention as promising gate insulators and channel materials for field-effect transistors. Because monolayer MoS2 is a direct-bandgap semiconductor due to quantum-mechanical confinement, it could be suitable for applications in optoelectronic devices where the direct bandgap would allow a high absorption coefficient and efficient electron-hole pair generation under photoexcitation. Here, we demonstrate ultrasensitive monolayer MoS2 phototransistors with improved device mobility and ON current. Our devices show a maximum external photoresponsivity of 880 A W(-1) at a wavelength of 561 nm and a photoresponse in the 400-680 nm range. With recent developments in large-scale production techniques such as liquid-scale exfoliation and chemical vapour deposition-like growth, MoS2 shows important potential for applications in MoS2-based integrated optoelectronic circuits, light sensing, biomedical imaging, video recording and spectroscopy.
