Low-temperature growth of Three dimensional ReS2/ReO2 metal-semiconductor heterojunctions on Graphene/polyimide film for enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract Flexible inorganic electronics (FIE) have shown unique advantages in energy conversion, aerospace and wearable devices due to excellent electronic properties and thermostability of inorganic materials. The industrialization of high-performance flexible inorganic electronics (FIE) devices requires universal approaches to fabricate inorganic crystal on polymer substrates at acceptable temperature. Herein, we firstly developed the vortex flow chemical vapor deposition (VFCVD) for low temperature synthesis of high-quality vertical ReO2 arrays at 450 °C on flexible graphene-polyimide (G-PI) conductive film. The Euler equations suggest that the vapor pressure of ReO2 is almost 100-times higher than that of free space with VFCVD at identical conditions. The derived ReS2/ReO2 metal-semiconductor heterojunction arrays are performed outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with high long-term stability as an energy conversion device. This work opens up an opportunity for low temperature growth of inorganic nanomaterials on polymer substrates by VFCVD for the industrialization of high-performance flexible energy devices.