A facile one step hydrothermal synthesis of flower-like nanosheets of MoS2 for nanoelectronics technology

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are highly efficient materials due to their vast applications in the domain of optoelectronics, photodetectors, catalysis, supercapacitors, and battery storage. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) is the most important TMD material due to the existence of fascinating optical, electronic, and chemical properties. Herein, we have synthesized MoS₂ using a facile one-step hydrothermal technique resulting in low-cost 1T@2H MoS₂ flower-like nanosheets and examined the structural, electronic, and optical properties. The field emission gun-scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) images confirm the flower-like nanosheet morphology of the synthesized MoS₂. Further, the Xray diffraction (XRD) peaks of MoS2 confirm the hexagonal phase with space group P63/mmc. The observed Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) image shows the formation of thin nanosheets of MoS₂ while the crystal planes of MoS2 can be noticed from the High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) images. Also, an interplanar distance (d) of 0.62 nm has been observed from the HRTEM images of MoS₂ nanosheets. The Raman spectrum confirms the vibrational modes corresponding to the 2H and 1T phase of MoS₂ indicating the formation of a mixed phase in the structure. An excellent luminescent behavior has been observed from the photoluminescence (PL) plot. The electronic nature of the material has been evaluated from the Tauc plot and an optical band gap of 1.69 eV has been observed indicating the formation of a few layers of semiconducting MoS₂. This rigorous study suggests the potential application of MoS₂ in nanoelectronic devices.