MoS2 Nanosheet Phototransistors with Thickness-Modulated Optical Energy Gap

We report on the fabrication of top-gate phototransistors based on a few-layered MoS2 nanosheet with a transparent gate electrode. Our devices with triple MoS2 layers exhibited excellent photodetection capabilities for red light, while those with single- and double-layers turned out to be quite useful for green light detection. The varied functionalities are attributed to energy gap modulation by the number of MoS2 layers. The photoelectric probing on working transistors with the nanosheets demonstrates that single-layer MoS2 has a significant energy bandgap of 1.8 eV, while those of double- and triple-layer MoS2 reduce to 1.65 and 1.35 eV, respectively.