Oxidation suppression during hydrothermal phase reversion allows synthesis of monolayer semiconducting MoS2 in stable aqueous suspension.

This letter demonstrates a simple method to achieve high-yields of 1H semiconducting MoS2 monolayers in concentrated, colloidally-stable aqueous suspension. The method is based on oxidation suppression during the hydrothermal processing step used for metal-to-semiconductor phase reversion. Accompanying DFT calculations on elementary steps in the MoS2 wet oxidation reaction suggest that a two-site corrosion mechanism is responsible for the observed high reactivity and low stability of 1T metallic MoS2.