Reports of metallic behavior in two-dimensional (2D) systems such as high mobility metal-oxide field effect transistors, insulating oxide interfaces, graphene, and MoS2 have challenged the well-known prediction of Abrahams, et al. that all 2D systems must be insulating. The existence of a metallic state for such a wide range of 2D systems thus reveals a wide gap in our understanding of 2D trans...

When designing semiconductor heterostructures, it is expected that epitaxial alignment will facilitate low-defect interfaces and efficient vertical transport. Here, we report lattice-matched epitaxial growth of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) directly on gallium nitride (GaN), resulting in high-quality, unstrained, single-layer MoS2 with strict registry to the GaN lattice. These results present a p...

The development of nonprecious electrochemical catalysts for water splitting is a key step to achieve a sustainable energy supply for the future. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has been extensively studied as a promising low-cost catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), whereas HER is only catalyzed at the edge for pristine MoS2, leaving a large area of basal plane useless. Herein, on-surfa...

Tribological coatings of yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ), gold, diamond like carbon (DLC) and MoS2 were synthesized using magnetron assisted pulsed laser deposition (MSPLD). The coatings were synthesized in four-component and three-component combinations that included YSZ/Au/DLC/MoS2, YSZ/Au/MoS2, and YSZ/Au/DLC. A range of coating compositions was studied to explore coating optimization for l...

Controlling the band gap by tuning the lattice structure through pressure engineering is a relatively new route for tailoring the optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Here, we investigate the electronic structure and lattice vibrational dynamics of the distorted monolayer 1T-MoS2 (1T') and the monolayer 2H-MoS2 via a diamond anvil cell (DAC) and density functional theory...

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a kind of graphene-like, two-dimensional material, has attracted great interest because of its unique properties and potential applications in electronics and sensors. In this paper, first-principle calculations and grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations are performed and used to show that the MoS2 layer is efficient at absorbing non-polar gases. Compared wi...

Direct attachment of MoS2 to materials with carbonaceous architecture remains a major challenge because of non-intimate contact between the carbonaceous materials and active MoS2 material. In this study, we report a new unique synthetic method to produce a new type of hybrid nanostructure of MoS2-CNTs composites. We developed a novel strategy for the synthesis of cylindrical MoS2 directly grown...

Nanomaterials are prone to influence by chemical adsorption because of their large surface to volume ratios. This enables sensitive detection of adsorbed chemical species which, in turn, can tune the properties of the host material. Recent studies discovered that single and multi-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) films are ultra-sensitive to several important environmental molecules. Here we re...

The inorganic layered crystal (ILC) MoS2 in low dimensions is considered as one of the most promising and efficient semiconductors. To enable the magnetism and keep intrinsic crystal structures, we carried out a first-principles study of the magnetic and semiconductive monolayer MoS2 adsorbed with the Mnn (n = 1-4) clusters, and bilayer MoS2 intercalated with the same clusters. Geometric optimi...

We report a combined experimental and theoretical study of the growth of sub-monolayer amounts of silicon (Si) on molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). At room temperature and low deposition rates we have found compelling evidence that the deposited Si atoms intercalate between the MoS2 layers. Our evidence relies on several experimental observations: (1) Upon the deposition of Si on pristine MoS2 the m...