Herein, we report an original adaptation of an XRD set-up in order to measure the miscut angle values in our 4H-SiC on axis substrates with a high precision of ± 0.02°. This study also reveals a correlation between the formation of wide steps on 4H-SiC(0001) and the relative orientation of the SiC crystalline planes versus the gas flow direction. These two results paves the way towards the reproducible growth of graphene over wide SiC steps.

The value and the nature of the bandgap of In4Se3 are still not well defined, with a large spread of the experimental data between 0.42 and 1.68 eV and an uncertain nature, predicted to be indirect by ab initio band structure calculations. Here we report on the optical transmission and photoluminescence (PL) performed in In4Se3 thin films grown by coevaporation on (0001)-oriented sapphire wafers. The quality of the polycrystalline layers allows the first detection of the excitonic-like transition in the optical absorption of this compound at low temperature. The PL detected under weak laser excitation shows a bound exciton emission at 0.75 eV. Strong laser irradiation reveals a quadratic dependence of the PL intensity on the optical excitation, which demonstrates a stimulated emission at 0.79 eV in relation with an exciton–exciton scattering process. On the basis of a reasonable estimate of the exciton energy, equal to 10 − 15 meV, we evaluate the direct bandgap of In4 Se3 to 0.82 ± 0.01 eV at low temperature.

Electrochemical synthesis of NH3 is a carbon-free alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch process. Obtaining NH3 from environmental pollutants, such as nitrates or nitrites, is a more practical route than from the nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) due to the difficult cleavage of the inert triple bond of nitrogen gas. Here, we report a novel heterogeneous catalyst based on iron (Fe) single-atoms supported on two-dimensional MoS2 (Fe-MoS2) for the nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR). Fe-MoS2 exhibits remarkable performance with a maximum Faradaic

We report on the growth of 2D layered indium selenide films on (0001)-oriented sapphire substrates by coevaporation. The θ − 2θ x-ray diffractograms reveal that the (00l) planes are preferentially oriented parallel to the substrate with a tendency to deviate from the 2D stacking as a function of the growth time. The ϕ-scans performed for the (107) and (10 10) orientations of the hexagonal (h) and rhombohedral (r) phases, respectively, reveal that both polytypes coexist in the epitaxial films. We show that the merging of the h-(100), r-(101), h-(101), and r-(102) lines results in different spectral shapes in the θ − 2θ scans according to samples, which gives qualitative information about the contribution of each polytype.

The sp2-bonded layered compound boron nitride (BN) exists in more than a handful of different polytypes (i.e., different layer stacking sequences) with similar formation energies, which makes obtaining a pure monotype of single crystals extremely tricky. The co-existence of polytypes in a similar crystal leads to the formation of many interfaces and structural defects having a deleterious influence on the internal quantum efficiency of the light emission and on charge carrier mobility. However, despite this, lasing operation was reported at 215 nm, which has shifted interest in sp2- bonded BN from basic science laboratories to optoelectronic and electrical device applications. Here, we describe some of the known physical properties of a variety of BN polytypes and their performances for deep ultraviolet emission in the specific case of second harmonic generation of light.