Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. T2221003) and other programs, the research teams led by Xinran Wang and Taotao Li from Nanjing University, in collaboration with their collaborators, have developed the oxygen-assisted metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (oxy-MOCVD) technology, which addresses the long-standing kinetic bottleneck in the industrial fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. Entitled “Kinetic acceleration of MoS₂ growth by oxy-metalorganic chemical vapor deposition”, this work was published online in Science on January 30, 2026. The paper can be accessed via: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec7259.

Two-dimensional semiconductors are regarded as a key advanced material to break through the bottleneck of transistor miniaturization and realize advanced manufacturing processes, presenting a crucial opportunity for China to develop a new frontier in this field. However, the industrialization of 2D semiconductors has long been plagued by challenges such as the difficulty in preparing large-size single crystals, slow growth rates and high impurity concentrations. The teams of Xinran Wang and Taotao Li innovatively proposed the oxy-MOCVD technology. By introducing oxygen to participate in the pre-reaction of precursors, the technology accelerates material growth and inhibits impurity incorporation from the source of chemical reaction kinetics, thus enabling the efficient and ultra-clean growth of high-quality 2D semiconductor materials. Boasting excellent process compatibility and controllability, this technology has for the first time in the world yielded 6-inch molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) single crystal wafers with large-size domains in the world. Compared with the traditional MOCVD technology, the domain area has increased by more than five orders of magnitude, and the growth rate has been raised by two to three orders of magnitude. The MoS₂ field-effect transistors fabricated with this technology exhibit an average room-temperature electron mobility of 101.3 cm²·V⁻¹·s⁻¹ (with a maximum value of 122.9 cm²·V⁻¹·s⁻¹) and an on-off ratio of 10⁹, which sets a new performance record for 2D semiconductors prepared by technologies for industrialization and achieves a perfect integration of high-quality lab-scale materials and industrial-scale mass production. This research not only reshapes the MOCVD growth paradigm from the perspective of growth kinetics, but also lays a technical foundation for the industrial-scale production of 2D semiconductors, which is expected to help China build core advantages in the field of next-generation information technology.

Figure Kinetic control enables epitaxy of large-size two-dimensional semiconductor single crystal.