However, electronic devices based on these classes of materials such as field effect transistors have not been explored in the literature so far.Īmong the MPX 3 family of semiconductors, NiPS 3 is a layered ternary metal thiophosphate with monoclinic crystal system containing two molecular formula units per unit cell (Ni 2P 2S 6), with point group, C2/m. Raman spectroscopic studies on certain stable MPX 3 compounds has been recently reported 40, 41. A recent report on the first principle calculations on MnPSe 3 reveals transformation from anti-ferromagnetic semiconductor to ferromagnetic half-metal by carrier doping 37.

Depending on the nature of metal ion, MPX 3 family of compounds may open up ways to fabricate field effect transistors which is still a missing link in the current literature. The cleavage energy of MPX 3 is reported to similar and in certain cases, lower than that of graphene and TMDs 41, 50. The MPX 3 family of materials possesses wide variation of band gap values from 1.3 eV to 3.5 eV. A recent review 49 highlights the importance of this class of materials and their multifunctionality. However, little is known as for as few layer MPX 3 materials are concerned and recently, this area has been attracting considerable attention 40, 41, 42 particularly towards catalysis 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 and UV photodetector 48. This class of layered compounds have been wellexplored in the latter half of 20 th century towards understanding their crystal structure and intercalation properties 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39. Both TMDs and black phosphorus possess small band gaps thus restricting their applications in optoelectronics using light of short wavelength field effect transistors (FETs) 20, 26.Ĭontinuous search for new 2D-materials has recently led to a well-studied class of bulk layered semiconducting metal phosphotrichalcogenides with formula MPX 3 (M = Ni, Fe, Mn, Co, V, Zn etc X = S and Se). The disadvantage though is its stability that is still being tackled. Recently, phosphorene has been looked at, as a potential candidate for optoelectronic, electronic devices and sensors 26, 27, 28, owing to its high on/off ratio coupled with high carrier mobility 29, 30.

Though the TMDs (MoS 2, WSe 2) have shown high on/off ratios with tunable band gap in the visible wavelength range 24, 25, the low carrier mobility is of concern. This has led to various fundamental studies in the areas of electronic, optoelectronic and ultrasensitive sensors with atomically thin MoS 2 membranes 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. Bulk MoS 2 is semiconducting in nature with an indirect band gap of ~1.2–1.4 eV 13, while mono-layer MoS 2 possesses direct band gap of 1.8 eV 14. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) such as MoS 2 form the next class of well-studied compounds with certain band gap tunability 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. However, the zero band gap of pristine graphene limits its use in optoelectronics and other applications. Among the 2-dimensional layered materials, graphene has received considerable attention due to its ultrahigh mobility and tunability of layer thickness 1, 2.

Field effect transistor