Metallic vanadium disulfide nanosheets as a platform material for multifunctional electrode applications

TL;DR

This paper reports a new chemical vapor deposition method for producing ultra-thin metallic VS₂ nanosheets with excellent electrical and electrochemical properties, enabling advanced electronic and energy storage applications.

Contribution

The study introduces a facile synthesis route for crystalline VS₂ nanosheets with sub-10 nm thickness, revealing their potential in electronics and energy storage.

Findings

Produced VS₂ nanosheets with sub-10 nm thickness and large domain sizes.

Achieved high electrical conductivity (~3×10³ S/cm).

Demonstrated applications in electrodes with low contact resistance and high capacitance.

Abstract

Nano-thick metallic transition metal dichalcogenides such as VS$_{2}$ are essential building blocks for constructing next-generation electronic and energy-storage applications, as well as for exploring unique physical issues associated with the dimensionality effect. However, such 2D layered materials have yet to be achieved through either mechanical exfoliation or bottom-up synthesis. Herein, we report a facile chemical vapor deposition route for direct production of crystalline VS$_{2}$ nanosheets with sub-10 nm thicknesses and domain sizes of tens of micrometers. The obtained nanosheets feature spontaneous superlattice periodicities and excellent electrical conductivities (~3$\times$10$^{3}$ S cm$^{-1}$), which has enabled a variety of applications such as contact electrodes for monolayer MoS$_{2}$ with contact resistances of ~1/4 to that of Ni/Au metals, and as supercapacitor electrodes in aqueous electrolytes showing specific capacitances as high as 8.6$\times$10$^{2}$ F g$^{-1}$. This work provides fresh insights into the delicate structure-property relationship and the broad application prospects of such metallic 2D materials.