Salt-Assisted 2H-to-1T′ Phase Transformation of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Zhuangchai Lai, Yao Yao, Siyuan Li, Lu Ma, Qinghua Zhang, Yiyao Ge, Wei Zhai, Banlan Chi, Bo Chen, Lujiang Li, Lei Wang, Zijian Zheng, Lin Gu, Yonghua Du, Hua Zhang

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Phase engineering of nanomaterials (PEN) has demonstrated great potential in the fields of catalysis, electronics, energy storage and conversion, and condensed matter physics. Recently, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) with unconventional metastable phases (e.g., 1T and 1T′) have attracted increasing research interest due to their unique and appealing physicochemical properties. However, there is still a lack of a simple, universal, and controlled method for the preparation of large-scale and high-purity unconventional-phase TMD crystals, restricting their further fundamental study and practical applications. Here, a facile, one-step salt-assisted general strategy is reported for the controlled phase transformation of commercially available TMDs with conventional 2H phase, yielding a large amount of metastable 1T′-phase TMDs, including WS2, WSe2, MoS2, and MoSe2. It is found that the easily accessible metal salts, such as K2C2O4·H2O, K2CO3, Na2CO3, Rb2CO3, Cs2CO3, KHCO3, NaHCO3, and NaC2O4, can be used to assist the 2H-to-1T′ phase transformation, greatly simplifying the synthetic process for producing metastable 1T′-TMDs. Importantly, this method can also be used to prepare 1T′-TMD alloys, such as 1T′-WS2xSe2(1−x). This newly developed strategy is robust and highly effective, which can also be used for the phase engineering of other materials with various polymorphs.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2201194
JournalAdvanced Materials
Volume34
Issue number26
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Apr 2022

Keywords

  • 1T′ phase
  • metastable phase
  • phase engineering
  • phase transformation
  • transition metal dichalcogenides

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering

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