Defect-moderated oxidative etching of MoS2

Abstract

We report a simple technique for the selective etching of bilayer and monolayer MoS2. In this work, chosen regions of MoS2 were activated for oxygen adsorption and reaction by the application of low doses of He+ at 30 keV in a gas ion microscope. Raman spectroscopy, optical microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize both the etched features and the remaining material. It has been found that by using a pretreatment to introduce defects, MoS2 can be etched very efficiently and with high region specificity by heating in air.