In this work, we report a facile, clean, controllable and scalable phase engineering technique for monolayer MoS. We found that weak Ar-plasma bombardment can locally induce 2H→1T phase transition in monolayer MoS to form mosaic structures. These 2H→1T phase transitions are stabilized by point defects (single S-vacancies) and the sizes of induced 1T domains are typically a few nanometers, as revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. On the basis of a selected-area phase patterning process, we fabricated MoS FETs inducing 1T phase transition within the metal contact areas, which exhibit substantially improved device performances. Our results open up a new route for phase engineering in monolayer MoS and other transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials.

Monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has attracted great interest due to its potential applications in electronics and optoelectronics. Ideally, single-crystal growth over a large area is necessary to preserve its intrinsic figure of merit but is very challenging to achieve. Here, we report an oxygen-assisted chemical vapor deposition method for growth of single-crystal monolayer MoS2. We found that the growth of MoS2 domains can be greatly improved by introducing a small amount of oxygen into the growth environment. Triangular monolayer MoS2 domains can be achieved with sizes up to ∼350 μm and a room-temperature mobility up to ∼90 cm(2)/(V·s) on SiO2. The role of oxygen is not only to effectively prevent the poisoning of precursors but also to eliminate defects during the growth. Our work provides an advanced method for high-quality single-crystal monolayer MoS2 growth.