Modification of Vapor Phase Concentrations in Molybdenum Disulfide Growth Using a Nickel Oxide Foam Barrier

Single-layer molybdenum disulfide has attracted significant attention due to its electronic and physical properties, with much effort invested toward obtaining large-area high-quality monolayer Molybdenum disulfide films. In this work, we demonstrate a reactive-barrier-based approach to achieve growth of highly homogeneous single-layer molybdenum disulfide on sapphire by the use of a nickel oxide foam barrier during chemical vapor deposition. Due to the reactivity of the NiO barrier with molybdenum oxide, the concentration of precursors reaching the substrate and thus nucleation density is effectively reduced, allowing grain sizes of up to 170 μm and continuous monolayers on the centimeter length scale being obtained. The quality of the monolayer is further revealed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurement by observation of a very well resolved electronic band structure and spin–orbit splitting of the bands at room temperature with only two major domain orientations, indicating the successful growth of a highly crystalline and well-oriented molybdenum disulfide monolayer.