Tailoring the Surface Chemical Reactivity of Transition‐Metal Dichalcogenide PtTe2 Crystals |
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| Authors: | Antonio Politano Gennaro Chiarello Chia‐Nung Kuo Chin Shan Lue Raju Edla Piero Torelli Vittorio Pellegrini Danil W. Boukhvalov |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Graphene Labs, Genova, Italy;2. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Rende, Cosenza, Italy;3. Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan;4. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Istituto Officina dei Materiali (IOM), Laboratorio TASC, Trieste, Italy;5. Department of Chemistry, Haiyang University, Seongdong‐gu, Seoul, South Korea;6. Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics Department, Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia |
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| Abstract: | PtTe2 is a novel transition‐metal dichalcogenide hosting type‐II Dirac fermions that displays application capabilities in optoelectronics and hydrogen evolution reaction. Here it is shown, by combining surface science experiments and density functional theory, that the pristine surface of PtTe2 is chemically inert toward the most common ambient gases (oxygen and water) and even in air. It is demonstrated that the creation of Te vacancies leads to the appearance of tellurium‐oxide phases upon exposing defected PtTe2 surfaces to oxygen or ambient atmosphere, which is detrimental for the ambient stability of uncapped PtTe2‐based devices. On the contrary, in PtTe2 surfaces modified by the joint presence of Te vacancies and substitutional carbon atoms, the stable adsorption of hydroxyl groups is observed, an essential step for water splitting and the water–gas shift reaction. These results thus pave the way toward the exploitation of this class of Dirac materials in catalysis. |
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| Keywords: | density functional theory surface science transition‐metal dichalcogenides vibrational spectroscopy X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy |
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