Controlling magnetism down to the nanoscale has potential to meet the growing needs of increasing computing power without increasing energy requirements through combining memory and logic functions in computing architectures. The synthesis of 2D van der Waals materials that display long range ferromagnetic order is limited to mechanical exfoliation of chemical vapor grown bulk crystals with only a few examples of solution phase synthesis, impeding any scale up capabilities for their incorporation in these devices. Here we have developed a one pot solution phase method for the synthesis of colloidal 2D van der Waals CrGeTe3 hexagonal nanoplatelets. Through X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, we confirm the presence of CrGeTe3 in the hexagonal R3 crystal structure with lateral dimensions &gt; 100 nm and thickness ranging from 10 – 50 nm. We have built the synthesis methodology through varying the precursors, reaction temperature, time and solvent leading to insight into a potential formation mechanism showing that GeTe seeds act as an intermediary to obtain CrGeTe3. The colloidal CrGeTe3 exhibit similar magnetic properties to its counterpart grown by chemical vapor deposition with a Curie temperature of 60 K and soft ferromagnetic behavior. This methods provides a simplified alternative from complicated self-flux methods towards synthesizing CrGeTe3 through a one pot methodology with commercially available precursors.

One pot solution phase synthesis of colloidal CrGeTe3 nanoplatelets

ACS Spring 2022

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