Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides are novel, gapped two-dimensional materials. Toward device applications, we consider MoS$_2$ layers on dielectrics, in particular in this work, the effect of vacancies on the electronic structure. In density-functional based simulations, we consider the effects of near-interface O vacancies in the oxide slab, and Mo or S vacancies in the MoS$_2$ layer. Band structures and atom-projected densities of states for each system and with differing oxide terminations were calculated, as well as those for the defect-free MoS$_2$-dielectrics system and for isolated dielectric layers for reference. Among our results, we find that with O vacancies, both the Hf-terminated HfO$_2$-MoS$_2$ system, and the O-terminated and H-passivated Al$_2$O$_3$-MoS$_2$ systems appear metallic due to doping of the oxide slab followed by electron transfer into the MoS$_2$, in manner analogous to modulation doping. The n-type doping of monolayer MoS$_2$ by high-k oxides with oxygen vacancies then is experimentally demonstrated by electrically and spectroscopically characterizing back-gated monolayer MoS$_2$ field effect transistors encapsulated by oxygen deficient alumina and hafnia.
Atomic disorder is a common limiting factor for the low-temperature mobility in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs; MX2). Here, we study the effect of often occurring atomic vacancies on carrier scattering and transport in p- and n-type monolayer MoS2. Due to charge trapping in vacancy-induced in-gap states, both neutral and charged vacancies resembling, respectively, short-range and combined short-range and long-range Coulomb scatterers, must be considered. Using the T-matrix formalism, we demonstrate a strong renormalization of the Born description of short-range scattering, ma…
Vacancy-induced magnetization of a graphene layer is investigated by means of a first principle DFT method. Calculations of the formation energy and the magnetization by creating the different number of vacancies in a supercell show that a clustering with big number of vacancies in the cluster is rather favorable than that of isolated vacancies, homogeneously distributed in the layer. The magnetic moment of a cluster with big number of vacancies is shown to be not proportional with the vacancy concentration, which is in good agreement with the recent experimental results. Our studies support t…
Creation of high quality p-n junctions in graphene monolayer is vital in studying many exotic phenomena of massless Dirac fermions. However, even with the fast progress of graphene technology for more than ten years, it remains conspicuously difficult to generate nanoscale and atomically-sharp p-n junctions in graphene. Here, we employ monolayer-vacancy-island engineering of Cu surface to realize nanoscale p-n junctions with atomically-sharp boundaries in graphene monolayer. The variation of graphene-Cu separations around the edges of the Cu monolayer-vacancy-island affects the positions of th…
To ensure the practical application of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides, it is essential to characterize their structural stability under external stimuli such as electric fields and currents. Using vacancy monolayer islands on TiSe2 surfaces as a model system, for the first time we have observed a shape evolution and growth from triangular to hexagonal driven by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) electrical stressing. The size of islands shows linear growth with a rate of (3.00 +- 0.05) x 10-3 nm/s, when the STM scanning parameters are held fixed at Vs = 1.0 V and I = 1.8 nA.…
We theoretically explore the effect of metal and disulphur vacancies on electronic and optical properties of MoS$_2$ and WS$_2$ monolayers based on a Slater-Koster tight-binding model and including the spin-orbit coupling. We show that the vacancy defects create electronic flat bands by shifting the Fermi level towards the valence band, indicating that both types of vacancies may act as acceptor sites. The optical spectra of the pristine monolayers show step-like features corresponding to the transition from spin split valence band to the conduction band minimum, whereas the defective monolaye…
The influence of atomic vacancy defects at different concentrations on electronic properties of MoS$_2$ and WS$_2$ monolayers is studied by means of Slater-Koster tight-binding model with non-orthogonal $sp^3d^5$ orbitals and including the spin-orbit coupling. The presence of vacancy defects induces localized states in the bandgap of pristine MoS$_2$ and WS$_2$, which have potential to modify the electronic structure of the systems, depending on the type and concentration of the defects. It is shown that although the contribution of metal (Mo or W) $d$ orbitals is dominant in the formation of …
Since the rising of graphene, boron nitride monolayers have been deeply studied due to their structural similarity with the former. A hexagonal graphene-like boron-carbon-nitrogen (h-BCN) monolayer was synthesized recently using bis-BN cyclohexane (B2N2C2H12) as a precursor molecule. Herein, we investigated the electronic and structural properties of this novel BCN material, in the presence of single-atom (boron, carbon, or nitrogen) vacancies, by employing density functional theory calculations. The stability of these vacancy-endowed structures is verified from cohesion energy calculations. R…
Using first-principles density functional theory calculations, we systematically investigate the structural, electronic and vibrational properties of bulk and potential single-layer structures of perovskite-like CsPb2Br5 crystal. It is found that while Cs atoms have no effect on the electronic structure, their presence is essential for the formation of stable CsPb2Br5 crystals. Calculated vibrational spectra of the crystal reveal that not only the bulk form but also the single-layer forms of CsPb2Br5 are dynamically stable. Predicted single-layer forms can exhibit either semiconducting or meta…
We theoretically study a single-electron spin-valley qubit in an electrostatically defined quantum dot in a transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer, focusing on the example of MoS$_2$. Coupling of the qubit basis states for coherent control is challenging, as it requires a simultaneous flip of spin and valley. Here, we show that a tilted magnetic field together with a short-range impurity, such as a vacancy, a substitutional defect, or an adatom, can give rise to a coupling between the qubit basis states. This mechanism renders the in-plane $g$-factor nonzero, and allows to control the qubit…
Recent experimental discoveries of graphene-stabilized patches of two-dimensional (2D) metals have motivated also their computational studies. However, so far the studies have been restricted to ideal and infinite 2D metallic monolayers, which is insufficient because in reality the properties of such metallic patches are governed by microstructures pervaded by edges, defects, and several types of perturbations. Here we use density-functional theory to calculate edge and vacancy formation energies of hexagonal and square lattices of 45 elemental 2D metals. We find that the edge and vacancy form…
Electric and thermoelectric properties of strictly monolayer MoS$_2$ films, which are grown using a novel micro-cavity based CVD growth technique, have been studied under diverse environmental and annealing conditions. Resistance of a thermoelectric device that is fabricated on a continuous monolayer MoS$_2$ layer using photolithography technique has been found to reduce by about six orders of magnitudes upon annealing in vacuum at 525 K. Seebeck coefficient of the layer also reduces by almost an order of magnitude upon annealing. When the sample is exposed to oxygen atmosphere, these paramete…
Recently, two-dimensional monolayer MoSi2N4 with hexagonal structure was successfully synthesized in experiment (Hong et al 2020 Science 369, 670). The fabricated monolayer MoSi2N4 is predicted to have excellent mechanical properties. Motived by the experiment, we perform first-principles calculations to investigate the mechanical properties of monolayer MoSi2N4, including its ideal tensile strengths, critical strains, and failure mechanisms. Our results demonstrate that monolayer MoSi2N4 can withstand stresses up to 51.6 and 49.2 GPa along zigzag and armchair directions, respectively. The cor…
Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures synthesized through the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method allow creation and tuning of intriguing electronic and optical properties of two- dimensional (2D) materials, the knowledge of which is critical for a wide range of potential applications. Here we report our scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) study of as-grown MoS2 monolayer and WS2/MoS2 heterobilayer on SiO2. The heterobilayer appears smoother than the MoS2 monolayer, with root mean square (RMS) roughness of 0.230 +- 0.021 nm in the former and 0.329 +- 0.033 nm in the latter. …
We explore the electronic structure, orbital character and topological aspect of a monolayer MoS$_2$ nanoribbon using tight-binding (TB) and low-energy (${\bm k}\cdot{\bm p} $) models. We obtain a mid-gap edge mode in the zigzag ribbon of monolayer MoS$_2$, which can be traced back to the topological properties of the bulk band structure. Monolayer MoS$_2$ can be considered as a valley Hall insulator. The boundary conditions at armchair edges mix the valleys on the edges, and a gap is induced in the edge modes. The spin-orbit coupling in the valence band reduces the hybridization of the bulk s…
We utilize cavity-enhanced extinction spectroscopy to directly quantify the optical absorption of defects in MoS$_2$ generated by helium ion bombardment. We achieve hyperspectral imaging of specific defect patterns with a detection limit below 0.01% extinction, corresponding to a detectable defect density below $10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$. The corresponding spectra reveal a broad sub-gap absorption, being consistent with theoretical predictions related to sulfur vacancy-bound excitons in MoS$_2$. Our results highlight cavity-enhanced extinction spectroscopy as efficient means for the detection of opti…
Ideal monolayers of common semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) such as MoS$_2$, WS$_2$, MoSe$_2$, and WSe$_2$ possess many similar electronic properties. As it is the case for all semiconductors, however, the physical response of these systems is strongly determined by defects in a way specific to each individual compound. Here we investigate the ability of exfoliated monolayers of these TMDCs to support high-quality, well-balanced ambipolar conduction, which has been demonstrated for WS$_2$, MoSe$_2$, and WSe$_2$, but not for MoS$_2$. Using ionic-liquid gated transistors w…
Single layers of transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS$_2$ are direct bandgap semiconductors with optical and electronic properties distinct from multilayers due to strong vertical confinement. Despite the fundamental monolayer limit of thickness, the electronic structure of isolated layers can be further tailored with lateral degrees of freedom in nanostructures such as quantum dots or nanoribbons. Although one-dimensionally confined monolayer semiconductors are predicted to have interesting size- and edge-dependent properties useful for spintronics applications, experiments on the opt…
We explore the combined impact of sulfur vacancies and electronic interactions on the optical properties of monolayer MoS$_2$. First, we present a generalized Anderson-Hubbard Hamiltonian that accounts for both randomly distributed sulfur vacancies and the presence of dielectric screening within the material. Second, we parameterize this energy-dependent Hamiltonian from first-principles calculations based on density functional theory and the Green function and screened Coulomb (GW) method. Third, we apply a first-principles-based many-body typical medium method to determine the single-particl…
We propose a theoretical model for describing the operation of a transistor with a MoS2 monolayer channel, which allows to obtain an analytical approximation of the potential in the channel. This potential depends on the drain and gate voltages. On this basis we make estimates for the minimum channel lengths due to the fundamental restriction of quantum tunneling through the barrier. It is shown that the relatively large effective mass of electrons in the MoS2 monolayer allows to predict the creation of devices with channels of a significantly shorter (2.5 - 3 nm) length than in traditional si…
Understanding the magnetic properties of the various Mn doping configurations that can be encountered in $2H$-MoS$_2$ monolayer could be beneficial for its use in spintronics. Using density functional theory plus Hubbard U (DFT$+$U) approach, we study how a single isolated, double- and triple-substitution configurations of Mn atoms within a MoS$_2$ monolayer could contribute to its total magnetization. We find that the doping-configuration plays a critical role in stabilizing a ferromagnetic state in a Mn-doped MoS$_2$ monolayer. Indeed, the Mn-Mn magnetic interaction is found to be ferromagnt…
In-plane optical anisotropy has been detected from monolayer MoS$_2$ grown on a-plane (11-20) sapphire substrate in the ultraviolet-visible wavelength range. Based on the measured optical anisotropy, the energy differences between the optical transitions polarized along the ordinary and extraordinary directions of the underlying sapphire substrate have been determined. The results corroborate comprehensively with the dielectric environment induced modification on the electronic band structure and exciton binding energy of monolayer MoS$_2$ predicted recently by first principle calculations. Th…
When an electron passes through a chiral molecule there is a high probability for a correlation between the momentum and spin of the charge, thus leading to spin polarized current. This phenomenon is known as the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. One of the most surprising experimental results recently demonstrated is that magnetization reversal in a ferromagnet (FM) with perpendicular anisotropy can be realized solely by chemisorbing a chiral molecular monolayer without applying any current or external magnetic field. This result raises the currently open question of whether this…
