Domain aligned growth of molybdenum disulfide on various substrates by chemical vapor deposition

We synthesized single-layer MoS₂ atomic films on various substrates by a chemical vapor deposition method. We chose three different substrates for MoS₂ synthesis in this study; SiO₂ as an amorphous substrate, Al₂O₃ or GaN as hexagonal crystalline substrates. The lattice constant of Al₂O₃ is not well matched with that of MoS₂ whereas the lattice constant for GaN is well matched with that of MoS₂. We investigated the orientation properties of the domains of single-layer MoS₂ atomic films on these three substrates and found that MoS₂ domains synthesized on lattice-matched GaN substrate are aligned better than the other MoS₂ domains synthesized on SiO₂ or Al₂O₃ substrates. Our study may provide an insight as a route to synthesize large size, single-layer, and single-domain MoS₂ atomic films.