Atom-by-atom studies of a two-dimensional hybrid material at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are paving the way toward novel low-power electronics. ORNL researchers used electron microscopy to examine newly synthesized samples of a combination of graphene and molybdenum disulfide, which could one day form the backbone of new electronic devices such as flexible cell phones. "In the future, it could be possible to imprint flexible electronic circuits using graphene and two-dimensional semiconductors such as molybdenum disulfide," said ORNL's Juan-Carlos Idrobo, a co-author on the team's study in Nano Letters. "But first, we need to understand how the atomic layers in these 2-D hybrid materials grow with respect to each other before we can start to make devices out of them." Microscopic analysis showed that atoms in the two materials are locked in a nonrandom orientation that is favorable for potential electronic applications.
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