Controlled Plasma Thinning of Bulk MoS2 Flakes for Photodetector Fabrication

The electronic properties of layered materials are directly determined based on their thicknesses. Remarkable progress has been carried out on synthesis of wafer-scale atomically molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) layers as a two-dimensional material in the past few years in order to transform them into commercial products. Although chemical/mechanical exfoliation techniques are used to obtain a high-quality monolayer of MoS 2 , the lack of suitable control in the thickness and the lateral size of the flakes restrict their benefits. As a result, a straightforward, effective, and reliable approach is widely demanded to achieve a large-area MoS 2 flake with control in its thickness for optoelectronic applications. In this study, thick MoS 2 flakes are obtained by a short-time bath sonication in dimethylformamide solvent, which are thinned with the aid of a sequential plasma etching process using H 2 , O 2 , and SF 6 plasma. A comprehensive study has been carried out on MoS 2 flakes based on scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron microscopy measurements, which ultimately leads to a two-cycle plasma thinning method. In this approach, H 2 is used in the passivation step in the first subcycle, and O 2 /SF 6 plasma acts as an etching step for removing the MoS 2 layers in the second subcycle. Finally, we show that this technique can be enthusiastically used to fabricate MoS 2 -based photodetectors with a considerable photoresponsivity of 1.39 A/W and a response time of 0.45 s under laser excitation of 532 nm.