Nucleation and Growth of Monolayer MoS2 at Multisteps of MoO2 Crystals by Sulfurization

Two-dimensional (2D) materials and their heterostructures are promising for next-generation optoelectronics, spintronics, valleytronics, and electronics. Despite recent progress in various growth studies of 2D materials, mechanical exfoliation of flakes is still the most common method to obtain high-quality 2D materials because precisely controlling material growth and synthesizing a single domain during the growth process of 2D materials, for the desired shape and quality, is challenging. Here, we report the nucleation and growth behaviors of monolayer MoS2 by sulfurizing a faceted monoclinic MoO2 crystal. The MoS2 layers nucleated at the thickness steps of the MoO2 crystal and grew epitaxially with crystalline correlation to the MoO2 surface. The epitaxially grown MoS2 layer expands outwardly on the SiO2 substrate, resulting in a monolayer single-crystal film, despite multiple nucleations of MoS2 layers on the MoO2 surface owing to several thickness steps. Although the photoluminescence of MoS2 is quenched owing to efficient charge transfer between MoS2 and metallic MoO2, the MoS2 stretched out to the SiO2 substrate shows a high carrier mobility of (15 cm2 V–1 s–1), indicating that a high-quality monolayer MoS2 film can be grown using the MoO2 crystal as a seed and precursor. Our work shows a method to grow high-quality MoS2 using a faceted MoO2 crystal and provides a deeper understanding of the nucleation and growth of 2D materials on a step-like surface.