Piezoelectricity of Bi2Se3 Nanosheet

Tingting Jia; Liu Yang; Juncheng Zhang; Hideo Kimura; Hongyang Zhao; Quansheng Guo; Zhenxiang Cheng

doi:10.3390/nano13182504

Piezoelectricity of Bi₂Se₃ Nanosheet

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Sep 5;13(18):2504. doi: 10.3390/nano13182504.

Authors

Tingting Jia^{1

2}, Liu Yang², Juncheng Zhang³, Hideo Kimura⁴, Hongyang Zhao⁵, Quansheng Guo¹, Zhenxiang Cheng⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
² Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
³ Optics and Optoelectronics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.
⁴ School of Environmental and Material Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China.
⁵ Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China.
⁶ Institute for Superconducting & Electronic Materials, University of Wollongong, Innovation Campus, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.

Abstract

Bi₂Se₃, one of the most extensively studied topological insulators, has received significant attention, and abundant research has been dedicated to exploring its surface electronic properties. However, little attention has been given to its piezoelectric properties. Herein, we investigate the piezoelectric response in a five-layer Bi₂Se₃ nanosheet using scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques. The piezoelectricity of Bi₂Se₃ is characterized using both conventional piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and a sequential excitation scanning probe microscopy (SE-SPM) technique. To confirm the linear piezoelectricity of Bi₂Se₃ two-dimensional materials, measurements of point-wise linear and quadratic electromechanical responses are carried out. Furthermore, the presence of polarization and relaxation is confirmed through hysteresis loops. As expected, the Bi₂Se₃ nanosheet exhibits an electromechanical solid response. Due to the inevitable loss of translational symmetry at the crystal edge, the lattice of the odd-layer Bi₂Se₃ nanosheet is noncentrosymmetric, indicating its potential for linear piezoelectricity. This research holds promise for nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) applications and future nanogenerators.

Keywords: bismuth selenide; mechanical exfoliation; piezoelectricity; piezoresponse force microscopy.

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51702351), and the Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province (2020B1515120019). This work was also financially supported by the opening project from National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China (M36054).