Tellurium-Assisted Low-Temperature Synthesis of MoS2 and WS2 Monolayers.

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a scalable method able to synthesize MoS2 and WS2 monolayers. In this work, we reduced the synthesis temperature by 200 °C only by introducing tellurium (Te) into the CVD process. The as-synthesized MoS2 and WS2 monolayers show high phase purity and crystallinity. The optical and electrical performance of these materials is comparable to those synthesized at higher temperatures. We believe this work will accelerate the industrial synthesis of these semiconducting monolayers.