The Role of Temperature in the Hydrothermal Synthesis on the Structural and Morphological Properties of MoS2

Abstract

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) generally has two main phases: semiconducting 2H-MoS2, with trigonal prismatic geometry, and metallic 1T-MoS2, with octahedral geometry. However, the 1T-MoS2 phase is metastable, and improvements are still needed in the synthesis process. In this study, we synthesized MoS2 using a simple hydrothermal method at either 180°C or 200°C for 24 h, using sodium molybdate dihydrate (Na2MoO4.2H2O) and thiourea (NH2CSNH2) as the Mo and S precursors. The study found that synthesis at 180°C produces flower-like MoS2 microspheres with an average diameter of 10 µm and a 1T phase, while MoS2 produced at 200°C has irregular lumps with a size range of 1-10 µm in a 2H phase with slightly higher (002) d-spacing (6.78Å).