Metal-assisted chemical etching of molybdenum disulphide

Large-scale two-dimensional (2D) electronics requires lithographic patterning of molybdenum disulphide (MoS₂) into various nanostructures for device integration. However, fabrication of MoS₂ nanostructures with well-defined edges remains challenging. In this paper, we devised a metal-assisted chemical approach to controllably etch MoS₂ into ribbons without damaging its basal plane enabling high-performance MoS₂ devices. Remarkably, our top-down anisotropic MoS₂ etching technology is CMOS compatible and eminently suitable for wafer-scale MoS₂ nanostructures production.