Transition metal chalcogenides (TMCs)

TMCs are a class of 2D materials that have gained intense interest in recent years due to their potential application in nano-electromechanical and optoelectronic devices. Tuning their crystal and electronic structures away from the pristine states through compression allows us to access exotic physical states not available otherwise. We recently reported that upon compression MoSe2, in contrast to MoS2, underwent a continuous structural evolution from an anisotropic 2D layered network to a 3D structure resulting in a continuous semiconductor-to-metal transition through a combined experimental and theoretical effort (Zhao et al., 2015). We plan to complement this static compression work by looking at these materials under dynamic compression at MEC.