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Unidirectional nucleation followed by seamless stitching has emerged as a promising strategy for the scalable epitaxial growth of single-crystalline monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides on sapphire substrates, which hold potential for post-silicon electronics. In contrast, here we present a different growth mechanism for single-crystalline MoS2 on c-plane sapphire via metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). We show that the initial nucleation generates not only 0° and antiparallel 60° domains but also low-angle twisted domains, consistent with the coincidence site lattice framework. However, these rotationally misoriented domains are observed to deterministically self-align and merge into energetically preferred 0° domain during coalescence, yielding a continuous, unidirectional single-crystal. Additionally, by employing MoO2Cl2 as a molybdenum precursor, we demonstrate that the growth of MoS2 occurs in a self-limiting manner. This epitaxial strategy is substantiated by a carrier mobility of 66 cm2/Vs at room temperature and 749 cm2/Vs at low temperatures. Our approach offers a practical and reproducible scheme for MOCVD-based van der Waals epitaxy for 2D electronics.

Rights:

• Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 International
  

Keyword: MoS2, epitaxial growth, MOCVD

Date published: 2026-01-21

Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Journal:

• Nature Communications (ISSN: 20411723) vol. 17 issue. 1 602

Funding:

• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP21H05237
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP21H05232
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP22H04957
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP17H03241
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP23K04592
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP23K03272
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP22K04212
• MEXT | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JP23K13622
• MEXT | JST | Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology JPMJCR24A3

Manuscript type: Publisher's version (Version of record)

MDR DOI:

First published URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68320-8

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Updated at: 2026-01-29 16:30:04 +0900

Published on MDR: 2026-01-29 13:54:41 +0900