Scientists Shuffle the Deck to Create Materials With New Quantum Behaviors.
Layered Transition Metal Dichalcogenides or TMDCs–materials composed of metal nanolayers sandwiched between two other layers of chalcogens– have become extremely attractive to the research community due to their ability to exfoliate into 2D single layers. Similar to graphene they not only retain some of the unique properties of the bulk material but also demonstrate direct-gap semiconducting behavior excellent electrocatalytic activity and unique quantum phenomena such as charge density waves (CDW).
Generating complex multi-principle element Transition Metal Dichalcogenides or TMDCs essential for the future development of new generations of quantum, electronic and energy conversion materials is difficult.
“It is relatively simple to make a binary material from one type of metal and one type of chalcogen” said Georgian Technical University Laboratory Scientist X. “Once you try to add more metals or chalcogens to the reactants combining them into a uniform structure becomes challenging. It was even believed that alloying of two or more different binary Transition Metal Dichalcogenides or TMDCs in one single-phase material is absolutely impossible.”
To overcome this obstacle postdoctoral research associate Y used ball-milling and subsequent reactive fusion to combine such Transition Metal Dichalcogenides or TMDCs as MoS2 (Molybdenum disulfide is an inorganic compound composed of molybdenum and sulfur. Its chemical formula is MoS ₂. The compound is classified as a transition metal dichalcogenide. It is a silvery black solid that occurs as the mineral molybdenite, the principal ore for molybdenum. MoS ₂ is relatively unreactive), WSe2, (Tungsten diselenide is an inorganic compound with the formula WSe₂. The compound adopts a hexagonal crystalline structure similar to molybdenum disulfide) TaS2 and NbSe2 (Niobium diselenide or niobium(IV) selenide is a layered transition metal dichalcogenide with formula NbSe2. Niobium diselenide is a lubricant, and a superconductor at temperatures below 7.2 K that exhibit a charge density wave (CDW)). Ball-milling is a mechanochemical process capable of exfoliating layered materials into single- or few-layer-nanosheets that can further restore their multi-layered arrangements by restacking.
“Mechanical processing treats binary Transition Metal Dichalcogenides or TMDCs like shuffling together two separate decks of cards said X. “They are reordered to form 3D-heterostructured architectures – an unprecedented phenomenon first observed in our work”.
Heating of the resulting 3D-heterostructures brings them to the edge of their stability reorders atoms within and between their layers resulting in single-phase solids that can in turn be exfoliated or peeled into 2D single layers similar to graphene but with their own unique tunable properties.
“Preliminary examination of properties of only a few earlier unavailable compounds proves as exciting as synthetic results are” adds Georgian Technical University Laboratory Scientist and Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Z. “Very likely we have just opened doors to the entirely new class of finely tunable quantum matter”.