Molybdenum Disulphide Heterointerfaces as Potential Materials for Solar Cells, Energy Storage, and Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Molybdenum disulphide (MoS 2 ), an ideal semiconductor, belongs to the group of 40 well‐identified transition metal dichalcogenides. These have unique chemical bonding; in an ideal case they do not feature dangling bonds and hence possess a layered‐like atomic structure, such that strong intraplane and weak interplane bondings exist. Hence, MoS 2 can be peeled into a precisely controlled number of layers; the bulk with E g = 1.2 eV can be reduced to a unit cell‐thick layer (monolayer) with E g = 1.89 eV. However, in reality, both bulk and monolayers possess many types of atomic defects associated with in‐plane, edge, grain boundaries, etc. As a result, MoS 2 exhibits many interesting and tunable optoelectronic properties suitable for a wide range of applications. Interestingly, its basic polyhedral form (MoS 6 ) undergoes a structural change that leads to many polymorphic phases, the three in bulk and the five in monolayer. Theoretical predictions and experimental observations clearly confirm that MoS 2 and its interfaces with other materials can be significantly important for energy conversion and storage applications, which are emerging and critically important topics of modern science and society. This Review provides an overview of the past few years of research and developments on these topics.

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