Scientists at Kansas State University have discovered a new ultrathin electrically conductive material they say may lead to advances in the efficiency of electronic and thermal devices.
Vikas Berry, the William H. Honstead professor of chemical engineering, and his colleagues found that manipulating molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)—a three-atom-thick inorganic compound material—with gold atoms improved its electrical characteristics significantly.
The discovery is the latest step in the team’s research on the synthesis and properties of next-generation atomically-thick nanomaterials, such as graphene and boron-nitride. According to Berry, it could lead to better transistors, photodetectors, sensors and thermally conductive coatings, as well as ultrafast, ultrathin logic and plasmonics devices.
“Futuristically, these atomically thick structures have the potential to revolutionize electronics by evolving into devices that will be only a few atoms thick,” Berry said.
Experimenting with transistors based on MoS2, Berry and his team enhanced several transistor characteristics of the material by combining it with gold nanomaterials. According to the researchers, MoS2 was recently shown to have better transistor-rectification than that of graphene, which is a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms.
“The spontaneous, highly capacitive, lattice-driven and thermally-controlled interfacing of noble metals on metal-dichalcogenide layers can be employed to regulate their carrier concentration, pseudo-mobility, transport-barriers and phonon-transport for future devices,” Berry said.
The researchers hope the work will greatly improve future ultrathin electronic devices and reduce their power consumption. The team plans to create more complex nanoscale architectures on molybdenum disulfide in order to build logic devices and sensors.
