{"id":46,"date":"2016-02-03T09:33:16","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T09:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/?p=46"},"modified":"2017-03-27T15:18:27","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:18:27","slug":"photoelectrochemistry-of-pristine-mono-and-few-layer-mos2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk\/in-abstract\/photoelectrochemistry-of-pristine-mono-and-few-layer-mos2\/","title":{"rendered":"Photoelectrochemistry of Pristine Mono- and Few-Layer MoS2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Measuring charge carrier diffusion in an atomically-thin semiconductor<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In a major feat of technical skill, a team of interdisciplinary researchers at The University of Manchester have studied the electrochemistry of a single atomic layer of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2<\/sub>) for the first time.<\/p>\n

Molybdenum disulfide is an exciting material because it can be exfoliated into two-dimensional (2D) sheets, less than 1nm thick, or 100,000 times thinner than an ordinary sheet of paper. Unlike its more famous cousin, graphene, MOS2\u00a0<\/sub>is a semiconductor, with a band gap similar to silicon, meaning that it can be used to convert light into charge carriers (electrons and holes) and therefore produce electricity. This means that it has huge, but as yet unrealised applications ranging from microelectronics to photocatalytic hydrogen production. In many of these applications, it is important to understand how charge carriers move through and along MoS2<\/sub>\u00a0sheets. This is a challenge, not least because it is very difficult to make isolated one-layer-thick sheets of the material.<\/p>\n

In a key breakthrough, the researchers have made pristine monolayers and ‘few-layers’ of MoS2<\/sub>\u00a0by mechanical exfoliation, and for the first time have measured two of their key electrochemical-parameters – the electron transfer rate and the electric double-layer capacitance. They found that both increase with the number of layers in the stack. Careful measurements allowed the researchers to differentiate between the charge carrier diffusion between the 2D layers (in a multilayer) and along the 2D layer (in a single monolayer). This adds to our fundamental understanding and opens the way to exploiting MoS2<\/sub>\u00a0in applications such as water splitting.<\/p>\n

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