Role of substrate interface energy in the synthesis of high quality uniform layered ReS2

ReS2 is an emerging member from the family of layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and has interesting optical and electrical properties due to its weak interlayer coupling. Systematically, layered ReS2 structures were successfully synthesized by hydrogen assisted controlled chemical vapor deposition method. DFT calculations were performed to determine the interface energies between ReS2 layer and SiO2/Si, sapphire and mica substrates. Calculated interface energy and % strain are lower for mica as compared to SiO2/Si and sapphire, which helps to grow smooth layers on mica substrate as compared to SiO2/Si. At atmospheric pressure, larger interface strains are produced between substrate and growing layers which transforms the 2D layered structure to 3D flower-like structures. Under the controlled conditions, substrates surface energy is playing a key role and mica with the freshly clean surface is probably facilitating the atoms to grow along in-plane direction to form smooth films. Finally, photo-detector measurements were made under the extreme conditions (high energy and intense light with large voltage sweep) to check the stability and reliability of the devices. The good stability, sensitivity (217 mAW−1) and fast response (Trise = 0.61 s, Tdecay = 1.59 s) of the devices reflects the quality of the synthesize product for their use in the future optoelectronic devices.