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Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) has played an important role in determining the electronic band structures of semiconductors. However, the tip-induced band bending (TIBB) could strongly affect the measured valence and conduction band edges, which are of vital importance for a semiconductor. In the literature, the presence or absence of the TIBB effect in a given STS measurement is often not discussed thoroughly. In this work, we quantitatively investigate the TIBB effect in MoS2 with varying thicknesses using light-modulated contact-mode STS. Our results demonstrate that the TIBB effect is strongly dependent on the thickness of MoS2. With thin MoS2 of a few atomic layers (several nanometers), the TIBB approaches zero, and the measured STS can accurately reflect the band edges. While for thicker MoS2 of ∼100 nm, the TIBB can be as large as ∼1 eV. This work clarifies the ambiguity about the TIBB effect and provides a foundation for the interpretation of STS data on atomically thin semiconductors.

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  This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Jian Liao, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Jiamin Xue; Probing thickness-dependent tip-induced band bending in MoS2. Appl. Phys. Lett. 17 March 2025; 126 (11): 113101 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0252812.

Keyword: Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS), Tip-induced band bending (TIBB), MoS2

Date published: 2025-03-01

Publisher: AIP Publishing

Journal:

• Applied Physics Letters (ISSN: 00036951) vol. 126 issue. 11 113101

Funding:

• NSFC 12074256
• JSPS KAKENHI 21H05233
• JSPS KAKENHI 23H02052

Manuscript type: Author's version (Accepted manuscript)

MDR DOI:

First published URL: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0252812

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Updated at: 2026-07-06 10:34:11 +0900

Published on MDR: 2026-07-06 12:30:04 +0900