Synthesis of WTe 2 Nanowires with Increased Electron Scattering.

WTe has many interesting properties such as its extremely large non-saturating magnetoresistance and quantum spin Hall state in the monolayer limit. The anisotropic crystal structure of WTe can allow for isolation of particular crystal directions to study the predicted Weyl states or crystal-symmetry-dependent magnetoresistance when studied at limited dimensions. In particular, the recent demonstration of superconductivity in WTe monolayer suggests that realizing nanowire geometry for WTe may be important to investigate potential Majorana zero modes predicted in one-dimensional topological superconductors. In this work we demonstrate a large-yield, low-temperature synthesis of WTe nanowires, an approximate one-dimensional system, by converting WO nanowires via tellurization. The nanowires are single-crystalline, and have a higher resistivity than WTe exfoliated flakes with similar thickness. The increased resistivity is attributed to increased scattering from imperfect surfaces and higher surface-to-volume ratios of the WTe nanowires. We demonstrate that the synthesis method is generalizable to other transition metal dichalcogenides, laying the foundation for further study of this class of materials in the one-dimensional limit.