Highly Oriented WS₂ Monolayers for High-Performance Electronics

2D transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) semiconductors represent the most promising channel materials for post-silicon microelectronics due to their unique structure and electronic properties. However, it remains challenging to synthesize wide-bandgap TMDCs monolayers featuring large areas and high performance simultaneously. Herein, highly oriented WS₂ monolayers are reproducibly synthesized through a templated growth strategy on vicinal C/A-plane sapphire wafers. Various spectroscopic characterizations confirm the high crystallographic orientation and uniformity across the entire wafers. Electronic measurements for samples transferred onto SiO₂/Si substrates reveal high average field-effect mobilities of 62 and 180 cm²V^-1s^-1 at room temperature and 8 K, respectively. On hexagonal boron nitride substrates, these mobilities increase to 94 and 473 cm²V^-1s^-1, respectively. A record high saturation current density of 675 µA µm^-1 is observed, outperforming the index required for high-density integration circuits in IRDS 2025. This work paves the way for the application of wide-bandgap TMDC monolayers in post-silicon electronics.