Controllable epitaxial growth of GeSe2 nanostructures and nonlinear optical properties

Abstract

Germanium diselenide (GeSe2) has emerged as a new member of anisotropic two-dimensional (2D) materials and gained increasing attention because of its excellent air stability, wide band gap and unique anisotropic properties, which exhibits promising applications in the fields of electronics, optoelectronics and polarized photodetection. However, the controllable epitaxial growth of large-scale and high-quality GeSe2 nanostructures to date remains a big challenge. Herein, GeSe2 nanofilms with lateral size up to centimeter scale have been successfully prepared on mica substrate by employing chemical vapor deposition technique. Experimental results demonstrated that hydrogen is the key factor for the controllable growth of GeSe2 nanostructures and GeSe2-based heterostructures. Corresponding growth mechanism was proposed based on systematical characterizations. The nonlinear optical properties of as-prepared GeSe2 were investigated by employing open-aperture z-scan technique exhibiting significant saturable and reverse saturable absorption behaviors at wavelengths of 400 nm and 800 nm, respectively. This study provides a new and robust route for fabricating GeSe2 nanostructures and 2D heterostructures, which will benefit the development of GeSe2-based nonlinear optical and optoelectronic devices.