Nanomolding of metastable Mo4P3

Reduced dimensionality leads to emergent phenomena in quantum materials, and there is a need for accelerated materials discovery of nanoscale quantum materials in reduced dimensions. Thermo mechanical nanomolding is a rapid synthesis method that produces high-quality single-crystalline nanowires with controlled dimensions over wafer-scale sizes. Herein, we apply nanomolding to fabricate nanowires from bulk feedstock of MoP, a triple-point topological metal with extremely high conductivity that is promising for low-resistance interconnects. Surprisingly, we obtained single crystalline Mo4P3 nanowires, which is a metastable phase at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. We thus demonstrate that nanomolding can create metastable phases inaccessible by other nanomaterial syntheses and can explore a previously inaccessible synthesis space at high temperatures and pressures. Furthermore, our results suggest that the current understanding of interfacial solid diffusion for nanomolding is incomplete, providing opportunities to explore solid-state diffusion at highpressure and high-temperature regimes in confined dimensions.

Automated summary

Reduced dimensionality in quantum materials leads to emergent phenomena. Accelerated materials discovery is needed for nanoscale quantum materials in reduced dimensions. Nanomolding is a rapid synthesis method that produces high-quality single-crystalline nanowires with controlled dimensions. Here, nanomolding is applied to fabricate nanowires from MoP bulk feedstock, resulting in the creation of metastable Mo4P3 nanowires. This demonstrates the ability of nanomolding to explore previously inaccessible synthesis spaces, as well as the incomplete understanding of interfacial solid diffusion in nanomolding.