Low-Temperature Solution Synthesis of Few-Layer 1T '-MoTe2 Nanostructures Exhibiting Lattice Compression

Yifan Sun; Yuanxi Wang; Du Sun; Bruno R Carvalho; Carlos G Read; Chia-Hui Lee; Zhong Lin; Kazunori Fujisawa; Joshua A Robinson; Vincent H Crespi; Mauricio Terrones; Raymond E Schaak

doi:10.1002/anie.201510029

Low-Temperature Solution Synthesis of Few-Layer 1T '-MoTe2 Nanostructures Exhibiting Lattice Compression

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2016 Feb 18;55(8):2830-4. doi: 10.1002/anie.201510029. Epub 2016 Jan 25.

Authors

Yifan Sun¹, Yuanxi Wang^{2

3}, Du Sun¹, Bruno R Carvalho^{2

3

4}, Carlos G Read¹, Chia-Hui Lee^{5

3}, Zhong Lin^{2

3}, Kazunori Fujisawa², Joshua A Robinson^{5

3}, Vincent H Crespi^{1

2

3}, Mauricio Terrones^{6

7

8

9}, Raymond E Schaak^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
² Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
³ Center for 2-Dimensional and Layered Materials, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
⁴ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, 30123-970, Brazil.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].
⁷ Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].
⁹ Center for 2-Dimensional and Layered Materials, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].
¹⁰ Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].
¹¹ Center for 2-Dimensional and Layered Materials, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA. [email protected].

PMID: 26804980
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201510029

Abstract

Molybdenum ditelluride, MoTe2 , is emerging as an important transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) material because of its favorable properties relative to other TMDs. The 1T ' polymorph of MoTe2 is particularly interesting because it is semimetallic with bands that overlap near the Fermi level, but semiconducting 2H-MoTe2 is more stable and therefore more accessible synthetically. Metastable 1T '-MoTe2 forms directly in solution at 300 °C as uniform colloidal nanostructures that consist of few-layer nanosheets, which appear to exhibit an approx. 1 % lateral lattice compression relative to the bulk analogue. Density functional theory calculations suggest that small grain sizes and polycrystallinity stabilize the 1T ' phase in the MoTe2 nanostructures and suppress its transformation back to the more stable 2H polymorph through grain boundary pinning. Raman spectra of the 1T '-MoTe2 nanostructures exhibit a laser energy dependence, which could be caused by electronic transitions.

Keywords: chalcogenides; layered compounds; metastable compounds; nanostructures; transition-metal dichalcogenides.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't