Probing the electron states and metal-insulator transition mechanisms in molybdenum disulphide vertical heterostructures

The metal-insulator transition is one of the remarkable electrical properties of atomically thin molybdenum disulphide. Although the theory of electron–electron interactions has been used in modelling the metal-insulator transition in molybdenum disulphide, the underlying mechanism and detailed transition process still remain largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate that the vertical metal-insulator-semiconductor heterostructures built from atomically thin molybdenum disulphide are ideal capacitor structures for probing the electron states. The vertical configuration offers the added advantage of eliminating the influence of large impedance at the band tails and allows the observation of fully excited electron states near the surface of molybdenum disulphide over a wide excitation frequency and temperature range. By combining capacitance and transport measurements, we have observed a percolation-type metal-insulator transition, driven by density inhomogeneities of electron states, in monolayer and multilayer molybdenum disulphide. In addition, the valence band of thin molybdenum disulphide layers and their intrinsic properties are accessed. The mechanism that drives the metal to insulator transition in the two-dimensional material molybdenum disulphide is unknown. Here, the authors identify a percolation-type transition by studying the transport and capacitance properties of a metal-insulator-MoS2heterostructure.