Oxygen-Sensitive Layered MoTe2 Channels for Environmental Detection

Abstract

The oxygen (O-2)-dependent resistance change of multilayered molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2) channels was characterized. A variation of the channel resistance could reproducibly determine relative O-2 content (denoted as the O-2 index). We found that Joule heating in a layered MoTe2 field-effect transistor caused the O-2 index to decrease drastically from 100 to 12.1% in back gate modulation. Furthermore, Joule heating caused effective O-2 desorption from the MoTe2 surface and repeatable O-2 detection by multilayered MoTe2 channels was realized. This work not only explored the influence of O-2 on the electrical properties of multilayered MoTe2 channels but also revealed that MoTe2 channels are promising for sensing O-2 in an environmental condition.