Photoresponsivity enhancement in monolayer MoS${}_2$ by rapid O${}_2$:Ar plasma treatment

Abstract

We report up to ten-fold enhancement of the photoresponsivity of monolayer MoS${}_2$ by treatment with O${}_2$:Ar (1:3) plasma. We characterize the surface of plasma-exposed MoS${}_2$ by TEM, Raman and PL mapping and discuss the role of MoO${}_x$ in improving the photocurrent generation in our devices. At the highest tested laser power of 0.1 mW, we find ten-fold enhancements to both the output current and carrier field-effect mobility under the illumination wavelength of 488 nm. We suggest that the improvement of electrical performance is due to the surface presence of MoO${}_x$ resulting from the chemical conversion of MoS${}_2$ by the oxygen-containing plasma. Our results highlight the beneficial role of plasma treatment as a fast and convenient way of improving the properties of synthetic 2D MoS${}_2$ devices for future consideration in optoelectronics research.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Mechanisms of photoconductivity in atomically thin MoS2
• Electrical property tuning via defect engineering of single layer MoS2 by oxygen plasma
• Scalable Fabrication of Atomically Thin Monolayer MoS2 Photodetectors