Layered Transition Metal Dichalcogenides are under scrutiny for potential applications in electronics,  catalysis, sensing, photonics, and other technologies.  For many applications, superior control of the materials quality and the resultant interface is essential for practical, reliable device applications.  This talk will describe our recent studies investigating TMD materials surfaces using in-situ and ex-situ analysis to establish the quality of both geological and synthesized TMDs, and the challenges associated with enabling useful device technologies.

This work was supported in part by the Center for Low Energy Systems Technology (LEAST), one of the six SRC STARnet Centers, sponsored by MARCO and DARPA, by the SWAN Center, a SRC center sponsored by the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative and NIST, and the US/Ireland R&D Partnership (UNITE) under the NSF award ECCS-1407765.