Chemical vapor deposition growth of ReS2 nanowires for high-performance nanostructured photodetector

Abstract

Rhenium disulfide (ReS₂) is a recently discovered next-generation transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) material that exhibits unique properties, which have resulted in its wide use in the fabrication of electronic and optoelectronic devices. Studies on ReS₂ have mainly focused on the synthesis and applications of two-dimensional (2D) materials, while studies on one-dimensional (1D) ReS₂ have yet to be reported. Herein, 1D single-crystal ReS₂ nanowires have been synthesized successfully for the first time via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and utilized as the active layer in a nanostructured photodetector. The crystal structure, phonon vibration modes, and chemical states of the single-crystal ReS₂ nanowires have been investigated. Furthermore, the nanostructured photodetector using single-crystal ReS₂ nanowires as the active layer and Ag nanowire networks as the transparent electrodes exhibited excellent performance, including a higher photoresponsivity (5.08 × 10⁵), the highest external quantum efficiency (1.07 × 10⁶), and the largest specific detectivity (6.1 × 10¹⁵) among ReS₂ nanostructure-based photodetectors reported to date. Furthermore, the photodetector performance under vacuum conditions was investigated, which provides some information on the work mechanism of the ReS₂ photodetector.