Large scale epitaxial growth and transfer of monolayer MoS has attracted great attention in recent years. Here, we report the wafer-scale epitaxial growth of highly oriented continuous and uniform monolayer MoS films on single-crystalline sapphire wafers by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The epitaxial film is of high quality and stitched by many 0°, 60° domains and 60°-domain boundaries. Moreover, such wafer-scale monolayer MoS films can be transferred and stacked by a simple stamp-transfer process, and the substrate is reusable for subsequent growth. Our progress would facilitate the scalable fabrication of various electronic, valleytronic, and optoelectronic devices for practical applications.

In this work, we report a facile, clean, controllable and scalable phase engineering technique for monolayer MoS. We found that weak Ar-plasma bombardment can locally induce 2H→1T phase transition in monolayer MoS to form mosaic structures. These 2H→1T phase transitions are stabilized by point defects (single S-vacancies) and the sizes of induced 1T domains are typically a few nanometers, as revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. On the basis of a selected-area phase patterning process, we fabricated MoS FETs inducing 1T phase transition within the metal contact areas, which exhibit substantially improved device performances. Our results open up a new route for phase engineering in monolayer MoS and other transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials.

Recently, 2D materials exhibit great potential for humidity sensing applications due to the fact that almost all atoms are at the surface. Therefore, the quality of the material surface becomes the key point for sensitive perception. This study reports an integrated, highly sensitive humidity sensors array based on large-area, uniform single-layer molybdenum disulfide with an ultraclean surface. Device mobilities and on/off ratios decrease linearly with the relative humidity varying from 0% to 35%, leading to a high sensitivity of more than 10 . The reversible water physisorption process leads to short response and decay times. In addition, the device array on a flexible substrate shows stable performance, suggesting great potential in future noncontact interface localization applications.

Recently, monolayer molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) has emerged as a promising and non–precious electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction. However, its performance is largely limited by the low density and poor reactivity of active sites within its basal plane. Here, we report that domain boundaries in the basal plane of monolayer MoS2 can greatly enhance its hydrogen evolution reaction performance by serving as active sites. Two types of effective domain boundaries, the 2H-2H domain boundaries and the 2H-1T phase boundaries, were investigated. Superior hydrogen evolution reaction catalytic activity, long-term stability and universality in both acidic and alkaline conditions were achieved based on a multi-hierarchy design of these two types of domain boundaries. We further demonstrate that such superior catalysts are feasible at a large scale by applying this multi-hierarchy design of domain boundaries to wafer-scale monolayer MoS2 films.

The recent discovery of ferromagnetism in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials holds promises for spintronic devices with exceptional properties. However, to use 2D vdW magnets for building spintronic nanodevices such as magnetic memories, key challenges remain in terms of effectively switching the magnetization from one state to the other electrically. Here, we devise a bilayer structure of Fe3GeTe2/Pt, in which the magnetization of few-layered Fe3GeTe2 can be effectively switched by the spin-orbit torques (SOTs) originated from the current flowing in the Pt layer. The effective magnetic fields corresponding to the SOTs are further quantitatively characterized using harmonic measurements. Our demonstration of the SOT-driven magnetization switching in a 2D vdW magnet could pave the way for implementing low-dimensional materials in the next-generation spintronic applications.

2D semiconductors are promising channel materials for field-effect transistors (FETs) with potentially strong immunity to short-channel effects (SCEs). In this paper, a grain boundary widening technique is developed to fabricate graphene electrodes for contacting monolayer MoS . FETs with channel lengths scaling down to ≈4 nm can be realized reliably. These graphene-contacted ultrashort channel MoS FETs exhibit superior performances including the nearly Ohmic contacts and excellent immunity to SCEs. This work provides a facile route toward the fabrication of various 2D material-based devices for ultrascaled electronics.

Twist angle between adjacent layers of two-dimensional (2D) layered materials provides an exotic degree of freedom to enable various fascinating phenomena, which opens a research direction-twistronics. To realize the practical applications of twistronics, it is of the utmost importance to control the interlayer twist angle on large scales. In this work, we report the precise control of interlayer twist angle in centimeter-scale stacked multilayer MoS 2 homostructures via the combination of wafer-scale highly-oriented monolayer MoS 2 growth techniques and a water-assisted transfer method. We confirm that the twist angle can continuously change the indirect bandgap of centimeter-scale stacked multilayer MoS 2 homostructures, which is indicated by the photoluminescence peak shift. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the stack structure can affect the electrical properties of MoS 2 homostructures, where 30°twist angle yields higher electron mobility. Our work provides a firm basis for the development of twistronics.

Control of the precise lattice alignment of monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS ) on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is important for both fundamental and applied studies of this heterostructure but remains elusive. The growth of precisely aligned MoS domains on the basal plane of h-BN by a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition technique is reported. Only relative rotation angles of 0° or 60° between MoS and h-BN basal plane are present. Domains with same orientation stitch and form single-crystal, domains with different orientations stitch and from mirror grain boundaries. In this way, the grain boundary is minimized and a continuous film stitched by these two types of domains with only mirror grain boundaries is obtained. This growth strategy is also applicable to other 2D materials growth.