  In this article, we study the properties of metal contacts to single-layer
molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) crystals, revealing the nature of switching
mechanism in MoS2 transistors. On investigating transistor behavior as contact
length changes, we find that the contact resistivity for metal/MoS2 junctions
is defined by contact area instead of contact width. The minimum gate dependent
transfer length is ~0.63 {\mu}m in the on-state for metal (Ti) contacted
single-layer MoS2. These results reveal that MoS2 transistors are Schottky
barrier transistors, where the on/off states are switched by the tuning the
Schottky barriers at contacts. The effective barrier heights for source and
drain barriers are primarily controlled by gate and drain biases, respectively.
We discuss the drain induced barrier narrowing effect for short channel
devices, which may reduce the influence of large contact resistance for MoS2
Schottky barrier transistors at the channel length scaling limit.
