Defects engineering induced room temperature ferromagnetism in transition metal doped MoS2

First principle calculations are employed to calculate the electronic structure and magnetic properties of transition-metal doped MoS2 considering the effects of defect/defect complex. It shows that pure MoS2 with both Mo and S vacancy are nonmagnetic. Mn, Fe, Co and Ni substitution in Mo site all lead to spin polarized state. Considering defect complex, the results show that (TMMo + TMMo) defect complex has the lowest formation energy at high S pressure and prefers close to each other except for (CoMo + CoMo). Experimentally, we doped Mn, Co, Ni and Fe into MoS2 single crystals. The doping leads to room temperature ferromagnetic ordering and clustering, agreeing well with the first principle calculations. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd