Effect of Sintering Time on the Structural and Electrical Properties of MoS₂ Ceramics Designed for 5G/6G Technologies

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Effect of Sintering Time on the Structural and Electrical Properties of MoS₂ Ceramics Designed for 5G/6G Technologies

Seham R Alharbi and A F Qasrawi

Accepted Manuscript online 20 November 2025 • © 2025 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved.

What is an Accepted Manuscript? DOI 10.1088/1402-4896/ae221f

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Dates

Received 25 October 2025 Revised 15 November 2025 Accepted 20 November 2025 Accepted Manuscript online 20 November 2025

Peer review information

Method: Single Anonymous Revisions: 2 Screened for originality? Yes Journal RSS Sign up for new issue notifications Abstract

Herein, molybdenum sulfide (MoS₂) powder ceramics, pressed into pellet form and sintered at a low temperature (200 °C) for 1 hour and 20 hours, are studied and analyzed for potential use in high-frequency microwave technology design. It is observed that longer sintering times lead to enhanced crystallinity (fewer defects and larger crystallites), increased grain sizes, and reduced pore density, resulting in improved electrical conductivity and a conductivity type conversion from p-type to n-type. The porosity percentage decreased from 48.5% to 39.0% as a result of increasing the sintering time from 1hour to 20 hours, respectively. The donor and acceptor centers, along with the variable range hopping parameters—such as degree of disorder, hopping distance (R(200 K)), hopping energy, and density of localized states near the Fermi level (N(E_F)) - are found to be strongly dependent on the sintering time. Numerically, 〖N(E〗_F) decreased from 9.80×〖10〗^18 cm^3/eV to 2.81×〖10〗^17 cm^3/eV and R(200 K) increased from 6.78 nm to 15.50 nm as the sintering time increased from 1 hour to 20 hours, respectively. Furthermore, the ceramics, when designed as antennas and evaluated through return loss and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) measurements in the 9.0 kHz–6.0 GHz spectral range, demonstrate strong potential for 5G/6G technology applications. Notably, the sample sintered for 1 hour exhibited a main resonant frequency at 3.3 GHz, whereas the sample sintered for 20 hours showed a resonant frequency at 5.46 GHz. Both devices achieved return loss values better than –40 dB, VSWR of 1.02, and bandwidths of ~ 2.0 GHz, highlighting their suitability for high-frequency applications.