Catalytic chemical vapor deposition of large-area uniform two-dimensional molybdenum disulfide using sodium chloride

The effective synthesis of atomically thin molybdenum disulfides (MoS2) of high quality and uniformity over a large area is essential for their use in electronic and optical devices. In this work, we synthesize MoS2 that exhibit a high quality and large area uniformity using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with volatile S organic compound and NaCl catalysts. In the latter process, the NaCl enhances the growth rate (5 min for synthesis of monolayer MoS2) and purity of the synthesized MoS2. The optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, photoluminescence, and transmission electron microscopy measurements indicate that the NaCl-CVD MoS2 has a large grain size, clear Raman shift, strong photoluminescence, good stoichiometry, and 6-fold coordination symmetry. Moreover, we demonstrate that the electron mobility (10.4 cm2 V-1 s-1) and on/off current ratio (3 × 107) of monolayer MoS2 measured using a field-effect transistor are comparable to those of previously reported MoS2 synthesized using CVD.