Transition-metal dichalcogenide NiTe2: an ambient-stable material for catalysis and nanoelectronics
Transition-metal dichalcogenides hosting topological states have potential implications for catalysis and nanoelectronics. The chemical reactivity and ambient stability of NiTe2 has been investigated in order to assess the suitability of technology transfer.
Advanced Functional Materials Volume30, Issue22 2000915 (2020) doi: 10.1002/adfm.202000915
Recently, transition-metal dichalcogenides hosting topological states have attracted considerable attention for their potential implications for catalysis and nanoelectronics. The investigation of their chemical reactivity and ambient stability of these materials is crucial in order to assess the suitability of technology transfer. With this aim, an international team of researchers from Italy, Russia, China, USA, India, and Taiwan has studied physicochemical properties of NiTe2 by means of several experimental techniques and density functional theory. Surface chemical reactivity and ambient stability were followed by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) experiments at the BACH beamline.
Figure 1. a) Ni-3p and b) Te-4d XPS core-level spectra collected from as-cleaved NiTe2 (black curves) and from the same surface exposed to 2·104 L of CO (red curves), H2O (green curves) and O2 (blue curves). Adapted from "S. Nappini et al., Adv. Funct. Mater. 30, 2000915 (2020); DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202000915" with permission from Wiley (Copyright 2020) with license 4873681106527 |
The as-cleaved NiTe2 was also directly exposed to the atmosphere with the aim to assess its ambient stability. Ni-3p and Te-4d core-level spectra were measured as a function of exposure time to the atmosphere to study the aging of NiTe2. A passivation layer of TeO2 with a thickness ~7 Å was formed after only 5 minutes of air exposure and it saturates after 30 minutes.
Silvia Nappini1, Danil W. Boukhvalov2,3, Gianluca D’Olimpio4, Libo Zhang5, Barun Ghosh6, Chia-Nung Kuo7, Haoshan Zhu8, Jia Cheng9, Michele Nardone4, Luca Ottaviano4, Debashis Mondal1, Raju Edla1, Jun Fuji1, Chin Shan Lue7, Ivana Vobornik1, Jory Yarmoff8, Amit Agarwal6, Lin Wang5, Lixue Zhang9, Federica Bondino1, and Antonio Politano4,10 1 Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)- Istituto Officina dei Materiali (IOM) , Trieste, Italy
2 College of Science, Institute of Materials Physics and Chemistry, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, P. R. China Contact persons:
Antonio Politano, e-mail: antonio.politano@univaq.it; |