Electronic structure engineering of 2-D MoS2 sputtered thin films under ion beam irradiation: Induced by controlled defect generation

Abstract TMDs (Transition-metal dichalcogenides) come out in contemporary years as a remarkable class of two-dimensional (2D) materials and have allured enormous consideration. In the class of TMD materials, Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has unveiled encouraging applications in the domain of photonics, electronics, electrochemistry and energy. Specifically, the defects originated in MoS2 play a significant role in modifying the magnetic, electronic, catalytic and optical peculiarities of MoS2, depicting an applicable way in modifying the efficiency of MoS2 based devices. The course through which lattice defects influence the MoS2 peculiarities are unresolved. In the present work, we present comprehensively how lattice defects impact the electronic structure of MoS2. We have probed the prospect to employ swift heavy ion irradiation for nano-structuring of sputtered 2D MoS2 thin films. Our extensive study of ion instigated structural, optical and morphological alterations in MoS2 thin films manifests that resting on the parameters of irradiation profusion of defects can be established. Theoretically, the optical bandgap also has been determined using Density functional theory (DFT). We grow the thin films of MoS2 by the sputtering method and induced the defect in MoS2 thin films by ion irradiation. We evaluated how these defects impact the electronic structure of MoS2 thin films by measurements taken from Raman, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL), UV–visible spectroscopy, Atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS).