Efficient Growth and Characterization of One Dimensional Transition Metal Tellurides Inside Carbon Nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel, scalable method for synthesizing one-dimensional transition metal telluride nanowires inside carbon nanotubes, enabling their optical and electronic property tuning for nanoelectronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces an expanded framework for high-yield synthesis of various TMM nanowires inside CNTs, including WTe, beyond previous vacuum annealing methods.

Findings

Successful synthesis of WTe nanowires inside CNTs.

TMM nanowires show strong visible light absorption.

Electronic properties of CNTs can be tuned via TMM encapsulation.

Abstract

Atomically thin one dimensional (1D) van der Waals wires of transition metal monochalocogenides (TMMs) have been anticipated as promising building blocks for integrated nanoelectronics. While reliable production of TMM nanowires has eluded scientists over the past few decades, we finally demonstrated a bottom up fabrication of MoTe nanowires inside carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Still, the current synthesis method is based on vacuum annealing of reactive MoTe2, and limits access to a variety of TMMs. Here we report an expanded framework for high yield synthesis of the 1D tellurides including WTe, an unprecedented family of TMMs. Experimental and theoretical analyses revealed that the choice of suitable metal oxides as a precursor provides useful yield for their characterization. These TMM nanowires exhibit a significant optical absorption in the visible light region. More important, electronic properties of CNTs can be tuned by encapsulating different TMM nanowires.