Vertical/Planar Growth and Surface Orientation of Bi2Te3 and Bi2Se3 Topological Insulator Nanoplates.
Nanostructures are not only attractive for fundamental research but also offer great promise for bottom-up nanofabrications. In the past, the growth of one-dimensional vertical/planar nanomaterials such as nanowires has made significant progresses. However, works on two-dimensional nanomaterials are still lacking, especially for those grown out of a substrate. We report here a vertical growth of topological insulator, Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3, nanoplates on mica. In stark contrast to the general belief, these nanoplates are not prisms exposing (100) lateral surfaces, which are expected to minimize the surface area. Instead, they are frustums, enclosed by (01-4), (015), and (001) facets. First-principles calculations, combined with experiments, suggest the importance of surface oxidation in forming these unexpected surfaces.
†Center of Electron Microscopy and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Ying
Y
Jiang
†Center of Electron Microscopy and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Xun
X
Zhang
†Center of Electron Microscopy and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Yong
Y
Wang
‡Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, United States.|§Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
Na
N
Wang
‡Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, United States.
Damien
D
West
‡Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, United States.
Shengbai
S
Zhang
†Center of Electron Microscopy and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Ze
Z
Zhang
epitaxial alignment; surface kinetics; surface orientation; topological insulator nanoplates; vertical growth