Probing the chemical and electronic properties of the coreshell architecture of transition metal trisulfide nanoribbonsElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c1nr11522g

Ultraviolet and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies are used to probe the chemical and electronic structure of an amorphous, 220 nm-thick shell that encases the crystalline core in coreshell nanoribbons of TaS 3 . The shell is chemically heterogeneous, containing elemental sulfur and a with a notable (S 2 ) 2 deficiency over the crystalline TaS 3 core. We find nanoribbon stability to be substrate-dependent; whilst the ribbons are stable on the native oxide of a silicon surface, mass transport of sulfur species between the amorphous shell and a gold substrate leads to a significant change in the electronic properties of the nanomaterials. Our observations may have general implications for the incorporation of nanostructured transition metal chalcogenides into electronic devices. We have studied the electronic and physical structure of the coreshell architecture of a transition metal chalcogenide nanoribbon.