A collaborative effort between the teams of Xinran Wang and Taotao Li from Nanjing University-Suzhou Laboratory and Wang Jinlan from Southeast University has scored major breakthrough in two-dimensional semiconductors. Their findings, titled "Kinetic acceleration of MoS₂ growth by oxy-metal-organic chemical vapour deposition", have been published in Science on 30 January 2026.
Fig.1 Growth kinetics of MoS2 by oxy-MOCVD and conventional MOCVD.
Abstact: Kinetics determine the growth behavior of thin films, particularly for atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenides. Metal-organic (MO) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) offers promise for scalable growth, but the reactions are kinetically limited, leading to nanometer- scale domain size and carbon contaminations. Here, we unveil the fundamental kinetic limitations and overcome them by introducing oxygen- assisted MOCVD (oxy-MOCVD) technology. By tuning reactions with oxygen, MO precursors are converted into high-purity transition-metal oxides and chalcogens, producing aligned molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) domains with a size and growth rate that are orders of magnitude larger than conventional MOCVD. The MoS2 is free of carbon impurities and exhibits average mobility exceeding 100 square centimeters per volt per second. The scalability of oxy-MOCVD is demonstrated by 150-millimeter single-crystal MoS2 wafers, proving the feasibility of industrial-scale production.
Fig.2 Electrical performance of MoS2.
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec7259
