AFM study of the MoS2 thin films deposited by magnetron sputtering growth initial stage

Abstract

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) thin films with a thickness of about 3.5 nm to 11.5 nm on Si (111) and sapphire (0001) substrates were prepared by the stoichiometric MoS2 target (99.9% purity) magnetron sputtering. The structure formation features of the thin films were studied by preparing samples under the same deposition conditions and different deposition times 10, 20, and 30 s. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to study the thin film samples' morphological features and revealed various mechanisms of films structure formation on Si and sapphire substrates. For the thin films samples, the reflection spectra obtained and the values of the optical band gap were determined, which ranged from 1.73 to 1.69 eV.