Graphene-Confined Growth of Few-Layer PtSe2 via One-Step Selenization
Abstract
Platinum diselenide (PtSe2), a member of the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) family, is a promising material for next-generation electronic and optoelectronic applications due to its thickness-dependent properties, transitioning from semimetallic in bulk to semiconducting behavior at the few-layer limit. However, the scalable fabrication of large-area ultrathin PtSe2 films remains challenging, as conventional selenization of pre-deposited Pt layers often leads to undesired three-dimensional clustered growth. This work explores a novel strategy for promoting two-dimensional growth of PtSe2 by employing a graphene-mediated confinement approach. The method involves coating a Pt layer with graphene oxide (GO), followed by annealing in a selenium atmosphere, which results in the simultaneous formation of PtSe2 and the reduction of GO to graphene. The graphene overlayer acts as a physical confinement layer, suppressing vertical growth and enabling the synthesis of graphene-confined PtSe2 heterostructures on centimetre-scale substrates and promoting lateral connectivity of PtSe2 regions observed by STEM. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), including temperature-resolved in situ atomic-resolution measurements, was used to investigate the influence of selenization temperature on the growth mechanism and structural evolution of PtSe2 films. The results show that graphene confinement stabilizes lateral growth and promotes the formation of few-layer films with improved structural ordering. Beyond PtSe2, this graphene-assisted approach provides a general strategy for fabricating and stabilizing ultrathin TMD layers, including those prone to environmental degradation, providing a new outlook for enabling detailed studies of their intrinsic properties.
Related
- Casimir force in a water nanolayer confined by graphene sheets
- Half-quantized Hall Plateaus in the Confined Geometry of Graphene
- Direct observation of the electronic structure of even-layer puckered SnTe monolayer films on graphene
- Up/down-conversion of infrared light by few-layer graphene polytypes
- In-plane and out-of-plane magnetic field driven Josephson diode effect in magic-angle twisted four-layer graphene
BibTeX
@misc{krajcovicova2026grapheneconfined,
title = {{Graphene-Confined Growth of Few-Layer PtSe2 via One-Step Selenization}},
author = {Timea Ema Krajčovičová and Peter Kotrusz and Viera Skákalová and Agáta Laurenčíková and Igor Píš and Martin Hulman and Kimmo Mustonen and Michaela Sojková},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.15022},
eprint = {2610.15022},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15022},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Graphene-Confined Growth of Few-Layer PtSe2 via One-Step Selenization
AU - Timea Ema Krajčovičová
AU - Peter Kotrusz
AU - Viera Skákalová
AU - Agáta Laurenčíková
AU - Igor Píš
AU - Martin Hulman
AU - Kimmo Mustonen
AU - Michaela Sojková
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.15022
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15022
AB - Platinum diselenide (PtSe_2), a member of the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) family, is a promising material for next-generation electronic and optoelectronic applications due to its thickness-dependent properties, transitioning from semimetallic in bulk to semiconducting behavior at the few-layer limit. However, the scalable fabrication of large-area ultrathin PtSe_2 films remains challenging, as conventional selenization of pre-deposited Pt layers often leads to undesired three-dimensional clustered growth. This work explores a novel strategy for promoting two-dimensional growth of PtSe_2 by employing a graphene-mediated confinement approach. The method involves coating a Pt layer with graphene oxide (GO), followed by annealing in a selenium atmosphere, which results in the simultaneous formation of PtSe_2 and the reduction of GO to graphene. The graphene overlayer acts as a physical confinement layer, suppressing vertical growth and enabling the synthesis of graphene-confined PtSe_2 heterostructures on centimetre-scale substrates and promoting lateral connectivity of PtSe_2 regions observed by STEM. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), including temperature-resolved in situ atomic-resolution measurements, was used to investigate the influence of selenization temperature on the growth mechanism and structural evolution of PtSe_2 films. The results show that graphene confinement stabilizes lateral growth and promotes the formation of few-layer films with improved structural ordering. Beyond PtSe_2, this graphene-assisted approach provides a general strategy for fabricating and stabilizing ultrathin TMD layers, including those prone to environmental degradation, providing a new outlook for enabling detailed studies of their intrinsic properties.
ER -