Xiaolin Zheng1
Stanford University1
Forming pits on molybdenum disulfide (MoS<sub>2</sub>) monolayers is desirable for (opto)electrical, catalytic, and biological applications. Thermal oxidation is a potentially scalable method to generate pits on monolayer MoS<sub>2</sub>, and pits are assumed to preferentially form around undercoordinated sites, such as sulfur vacancies. However, studies on the thermal oxidation of MoS<sub>2</sub> monolayers have not considered the effect of adventitious carbon (C) which is ubiquitous and interacts with oxygen at elevated temperatures. Herein, the effect of adventitious C on the pit formation of MoS<sub>2</sub> monolayers during thermal oxidation is studied. The in situ environmental transmission electron microscopy measurements herein show that pit formation is preferentially initiated at the interface between adventitious C nanoparticles and MoS<sub>2</sub>, rather than only sulfur vacancies. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the C/MoS<sub>2</sub> interface favors the sequential adsorption of oxygen atoms with facile kinetics. These results illustrate the important role of adventitious C on pit formation on monolayer MoS<sub>2</sub>.