The current hysteresis effect of tower-like MoS2 nanocrystalline film for field emission and memristor applications

Abstract In this work, we investigate the hysteresis effect of the current-voltage characteristic for the magnetron sputtered molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanocrystalline films. The field emission hysteresis of MoS2 cold cathode is studied by sweeping mode with voltage upward/downward, the vacuum pressure has a remarkable effect on the hysteresis of the emission current and overall the hysteresis becomes more prominent as pressure rises. Besides, we also demonstrate the current-voltage behaviors of MoS2 film using thermal evaporated Al dot as top electrode and copper foil substrate as bottom electrode. The Al/MoS2/Cu configuration device presents an obvious current hysteretic effect and the current increases with the increase of the voltage sweeping times. The possible mechanism of the hysteresis has been proposed herein and also investigations provide a great promise for the development of magnetron sputtered MoS2 nanocrystalline films in applications such as field emitters and memristor devices.