A facile and universal top-down method for preparation of monodisperse transition-metal dichalcogenide nanodots

• Main Authors: Huang, Ying, Zhang, Xiao, Lai, Zhuangchai, Liu, Zhengdong, Tan, Chaoliang, Li, Bing, Zhao, Meiting, Xie, Linghai, Huang, Wei, Zhang, Hua
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science & Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Chemistry::Physical chemistry::Quantum chemistry
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/107098; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/25340
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Despite unique properties of layered transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets, there is still lack of a facile and general strategy for the preparation of TMD nanodots (NDs). Reported herein is the preparation of a series of TMD NDs, including TMD quantum dots (e.g. MoS2, WS2, ReS2, TaS2, MoSe2 and WSe2) and NbSe2 NDs, from their bulk crystals by using a combination of grinding and sonication techniques. These NDs could be easily separated from the N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone when post-treated with n-hexane and then chloroform. All the TMD NDs with sizes of less than 10 nm show a narrow size distribution with high dispersity in solution. As a proof-of-concept application, memory devices using TMD NDs, for example, MoSe2, WS2, or NbSe2, mixed with polyvinylpyrrolidone as active layers, have been fabricated, which exhibit a nonvolatile write-once-read-many behavior. These high-quality TMD NDs should have various applications in optoelectronics, solar cells, catalysis, and biomedicine.