Hole Contacts on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides: Interface Chemistry and Band Alignments

MoOx shows promising potential as an efficient hole injection layer for p-FETs based on transition metal dichalcogenides. A combination of experiment and theory is used to study the surface and interfacial chemistry, as well as the band alignments for MoOx/MoS2 and MoOx/WSe2 heterostructures, using photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and density functional theory. A Mo(5+) rich interface region is identified and is proposed to explain the similar low hole Schottky barriers reported in a recent device study utilizing MoOx contacts on MoS2 and WSe2.