Tunability of electrical and thermoelectrical properties of monolayer MoS$_2$ through oxygen passivation

Electric and thermoelectric properties of strictly monolayer MoS$_2$ films, which are grown using a novel micro-cavity based CVD growth technique, have been studied under diverse environmental and annealing conditions. Resistance of a thermoelectric device that is fabricated on a continuous monolayer MoS$_2$ layer using photolithography technique has been found to reduce by about six orders of magnitudes upon annealing in vacuum at 525 K. Seebeck coefficient of the layer also reduces by almost an order of magnitude upon annealing. When the sample is exposed to oxygen atmosphere, these parameters return to their previous values. In fact, it has been found that the electron concentration, mobility as well as the thermoelectric power of the material can be tuned by controlling the temperature of annealing and oxygen exposure. Once established, these values are maintained as long as the layer is not exposed to oxygen environment. This can offer a unique way to control doping in the material provided an effective encapsulation method is devised. Such control is an important step forward for device application. The effect has been attributed to the passivation of di-sulfur vacancy donors present in the MoS$_2$ film by physisorbed oxygen molecules. Band structural calculations using density functional theory have been carried out, results of which indeed validate this picture.