Graphene-Templated Synthesis of c-Axis Oriented Sb2Te3 Nanoplates by the Microwave-Assisted Solvothermal Method

The successful mechanical exfoliation and chemical synthesis of graphene has attracted considerable attention for the synthesis of other two-dimensional materials on graphene template. Chalcogenide materials such as Sb2Te3 are of interest due to the rhombohedral lattice structure with two-dimensional hexagonally closed-packed atomic layers along the c-axis. Here we synthesized c-axis-oriented Sb2Te3 nanoplates (NPs) on graphene substrates by the microwave-assisted solvothermal method. The microwave irradiation resulted in a higher temperature of graphene, compared with the synthesis solution, which was revealed by the single-mode microwave experiments and an analytical model based on energy balance and convective heat transfer. Besides, the lattice mismatch between c-axis-oriented Sb2Te3 and bridge sites of graphene was only 4%, which is also favorable for the graphene-templated Sb2Te3 synthesis. c-Axis-oriented single-crystalline Sb2Te3 NPs as large as 7 μm could be successfully synthesized on graphene w...