Spiral growth of few-layer MoS2 by chemical vapor deposition

Growth spirals exhibit appealing properties due to a preferred layer stacking and lack of inversion symmetry. Here, we report spiral growth of MoS2 during chemical vapor deposition on SiO2/Si and epitaxial graphene/SiC substrates, and their physical and electronic properties. We determine the layer-dependence of the MoS2 bandgap, ranging from 2.4 eV for the monolayer to a constant of 1.3 eV beyond the fifth layer. We further observe that spirals predominantly initiate at the step edges of the SiC substrate, based on which we propose a growth mechanism driven by screw dislocation created by the coalescence of two growth fronts at steps. Published by AIP Publishing.