Molybdenum disulfide is a compound often used in dry lubricants and in petroleum refining. Its semiconducting ability and similarity to the carbon-based graphene makes molybdenum disulfide of interest to scientists as a possible candidate for use in the manufacture of electronics, particularly photoelectronics. New work from a team including several Carnegie scientists reveals that molybdenum disulfide becomes metallic under intense pressure. It is published in Physical Review Letters. Molybdenum disulfide crystalizes in a layered structure, with a sheet of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between sheets of sulfur atoms. But it was theorized that changing this structure, without inducing impurities into it, could turn it into a metal. That is, a structural transition might enable electrons to flow smoothly. The team—including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov, Haidong Zhang, Sergey Lobanov, and Xiao-Jia Chen—found a way to induce this metallic state by putting molybdenum disulfide under pressure in diamond anvil cells. They found that molybdenum disulfide underwent structural changes as the pressure increased, and the compound began changing into a new phase. The team was able to determine that these changes were due to lateral shifting of the layers of molybdenum and sulfur. This process started above 197,000 times normal atmospheric pressure (20 gigapascals), under which
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