Low-temperature synthesis and electrocatalytic application of large-area PtTe2 thin films

Abstract

The synthesis of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has been a primary focus for 2D nanomaterial research over the last 10 years, however, only a small fraction of this research has been concentrated on transition metal ditellurides. In particular, nanoscale platinum ditelluride (PtTe2) has rarely been investigated, despite its potential applications in catalysis, photonics and spintronics. Of the reports published, the majority examine mechanically-exfoliated flakes from chemical vapor transport (CVT) grown crystals. While this production method is ideal for fundamental studies, it is very resource intensive therefore rendering this process unsuitable for large scale applications. In this report, the synthesis of thin films of PtTe2 through the reaction of solid-phase precursor films is described. This offers a production method for large-area, thickness-controlled PtTe2, suitable for a range of applications. These polycrystalline PtTe2 films were grown at temperatures as low as 450 degC, significantly below the typical temperatures used in the CVT synthesis methods. To investigate their potential applicability, these films were examined as electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The films showed promising catalytic behavior, however, the PtTe2 was found to undergo chemical transformation to a substoichiometric chalcogenide compound under ORR conditions. This study shows while PtTe2 is stable and highly useful for HER, this property does not apply to ORR, which undergoes a fundamentally different mechanism. This study broadens our knowledge of the electrocatalysis of TMDs.

References in corpus (11)

• Lorentz-violating type-II Dirac fermions in transition metal dichalcogenide PtTe${}_2$
• Observation of Fermi Arcs in Type-II Weyl Semimetal Candidate WTe2
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• Low-Temperature Eutectic Synthesis of PtTe2 with Weak Antilocalization and Controlled Layer Thinning
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Excellent HER and OER Catalyzing Performance of Se-vacancies in Defects-engineering PtSe2: From Simulation to Experiment
• Surface Modification and Subsequent Fermi Density Enhancement of Bi(111)
• Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition of PtSe2
• Visible and Terahertz Nonlinear Responses in the Topological Noble Metal Dichalcogenide PdTe2