and duesberg@tcd.ie Platinum diselenide (PtSe 2 ) is a newly discovered 2D material which is of great interest for applications in electronics and catalysis. PtSe 2 films were synthesized by thermally-assisted selenization of predeposited platinum films and scanning transmission electron microscopy revealed the crystal structure of these films to be 1T. Raman scattering of these films was studied as a function of film thickness, laser wavelength and laser polarization. E g and A 1gRaman active modes were identified using polarization measurements in the Raman setup.These modes were found to display a clear position and intensity dependence with film thickness, for multiple excitation wavelengths, and their peak positions agree with simulated phonon dispersion curves for PtSe 2 . These results highlight the practicality of using Raman spectroscopy as a prime characterization technique for newly-synthesized 2D materials.

The use of colloidal self-assembly to form the complex multiscale patterns in many optoelectronic devices has been a long-standing dream of the nanoscience community. While great progress has been made using charged colloids in polar solvents, controlled assembly from nonpolar solvents is much more challenging. The major challenge is colloidal clustering caused by strong van der Waals (vdW) attraction between long-chain surface capping ligands passivating the surface of nanocrystals. Such clustering degrades ordering in packing during the self-assembly process. While ligand exchange to provide colloidal stability in polar phases is often an option, this is not the case for the exciting new class of halide perovskites due to the material’s solubility in essentially all polar solvents. Here, we report surface-functionalized self-assembly of luminescent CsPbBr 3 perovskite nanocubes by partially replacing long-chain oleyl groups (18 carbon chain) with short-chain thiocyanate (SCN – ). This enables the fabrication of ultrasmooth monolayer thin films of nanocubes with a root-mean-square (RMS) roughness of around 4 Å. This ultrasmooth large area self-assembled layer could act as high-efficiency optoelectronic devices like solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), transistors, etc. We correlate our experimental results with simulations, providing detailed predictions for lattice constants with chain conformations showing reduced free energy for cubes grafted with short-chain thiocyanate compared to long-chain oleyl groups, thus facilitating better self-assembly.

Vertically aligned nanowires (NWs) of single crystal semiconductors have attracted a great deal of interest in the past few years. They have strong potential to be used in device structures with high density and with intriguing optoelectronic properties. However, fabricating such nanowire structures using organic semiconducting materials remains technically challenging. Here we report a simple procedure for the synthesis of crystalline 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl) anthracene (BPEA) NWs on a graphene surface utilizing a solution-phase van der Waals (vdW) epitaxial strategy. The wires are found to grow preferentially in a vertical direction on the surface of graphene. Structural characterization and first-principles ab initio simulations were performed to investigate the epitaxial growth and the molecular orientation of the BPEA molecules on graphene was studied, revealing the role of interactions at the graphene-BPEA interface in determining the molecular orientation. These free-standing NWs showed not only efficient optical waveguiding with low loss along the NW but also confinement of light between the two end facets of the NW forming a microcavity Fabry-Pérot resonator. From an analysis of the optical dispersion within such NW microcavities, we observed strong slowing of the waveguided light with a group velocity reduced to one-tenth the speed of light. Applications of the vertical single-crystalline organic NWs grown on graphene will benefit from a combination of the unique electronic properties and flexibility of graphene and the tunable optical and electronic properties of organic NWs. Therefore, these vertical organic NW arrays on graphene offer the potential for realizing future on-chip light sources.

Considerable attention has been drawn to the lead halide perovskites (LHPs) because of their outstanding optoelectronic characteristics. LHP nanosheets (NSs) grown from single crystalline lead halide possess advantages in device applications as they provide the possibility for control over morphology, composition, and crystallinity. Here, free-standing lead bromide (PbBr 2 ) single-crystalline NSs with sizes up to one centimeter are synthesized from solution. These NSs can be converted to LHP while maintaining the NS morphology. We demonstrate that these perovskite NSs can be processed directly for fabrication of photodetector and laser arrays on a large scale. This strategy will allow high-yield synthesis of large-size perovskite NSs for functional devices in an integrated photonics platform.