No Arabic abstract
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are among the most promising candidates for next-generation electronics due to their atomic thinness, allowing for flexible transparent electronics and ultimate length scaling. Thus far, atomically-thin p-n junctions, metal-semiconductor contacts, and metal-insulator barriers have been demonstrated. While 2D materials achieve the thinnest possible devices, precise nanoscale control over the lateral dimensions is also necessary. Here, we report the direct synthesis of sub-nanometer-wide 1D MoS2 channels embedded within WSe2 monolayers, using a dislocation-catalyzed approach. The 1D channels have edges free of misfit dislocations and dangling bonds, forming a coherent interface with the embedding 2D matrix. Periodic dislocation arrays produce 2D superlattices of coherent MoS2 1D channels in WSe2. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we have identified other combinations of 2D materials where 1D channels can also be formed. The electronic band structure of these 1D channels offer the promise of carrier confinement in a direct-gap material and charge separation needed to access the ultimate length scales necessary for future electronic applications.
The relation between unusual Mexican-hat band dispersion, ferromagnetism and ferroelasticity is investigated using a combination of analytical, first-principles and phenomenological methods. The class of material with Mexican-hat band edge is studied using the $alpha$-SnO monolayer as a prototype. Such band edge causes a van Hove singularity diverging with $frac{1}{sqrt{E}}$, and in p-type material leads to spatial and/or time-reversal spontaneous symmetry breaking. We show that an unexpected multiferroic phase is obtained in a range of hole density for which the material presents ferromagnetism and ferroelasticity simultaneously.
Having smaller energy density than batteries, supercapacitors have exceptional power density and cyclability. Their energy density can be increased using ionic liquids and electrodes with sub-nanometer pores, but this tends to reduce their power density and compromise the key advantage of supercapacitors. To help address this issue through material optimization, here we unravel the mechanisms of charging sub-nanometer pores with ionic liquids using molecular simulations, navigated by a phenomenological model. We show that charging of ionophilic pores is a diffusive process, often accompanied by overfilling followed by de-filling. In sharp contrast to conventional expectations, charging is fast because ion diffusion during charging can be an order of magnitude faster than in bulk, and charging itself is accelerated by the onset of collective modes. Further acceleration can be achieved using ionophobic pores by eliminating overfilling/de-filling and thus leading to charging behavior qualitatively different from that in conventional, ionophilic pores.
Two-dimensional materials are emerging as a promising platform for ultrathin channels in field-effect transistors. To this aim, novel high-mobility semiconductors need to be found or engineered. While extrinsic mechanisms can in general be minimized by improving fabrication processes, the suppression of intrinsic scattering (driven e.g. by electron-phonon interactions) requires to modify the electronic or vibrational properties of the material. Since intervalley scattering critically affects mobilities, a powerful approach to enhance transport performance relies on engineering the valley structure. We show here the power of this strategy using uniaxial strain to lift degeneracies and suppress scattering into entire valleys, dramatically improving performance. This is shown in detail for arsenene, where a 2% strain stops scattering into 4 of the 6 valleys, and leads to a 600% increase in mobility. The mechanism is general and can be applied to many other materials, including in particular the isostructural antimonene and blue phosphorene.
Low-dimensional materials differ from their bulk counterpart in many respects. In particular, the screening of the Coulomb interaction is strongly reduced, which can have important consequences such as the significant increase of exciton binding energies. In bulk materials the binding energy is used as an indicator in optical spectra to distinguish different kinds of excitons, but this is not possible in low-dimensional materials, where the binding energy is large and comparable in size for excitons of very different localization. Here we demonstrate that the exciton band structure, which can be accessed experimentally, instead provides a powerful way to identify the exciton character. By comparing the ab initio solution of the many-body Bethe-Salpeter equation for graphane and single-layer hexagonal BN, we draw a general picture of the exciton dispersion in two-dimensional materials, highlighting the different role played by the exchange electron-hole interaction and by the electronic band structure. Our interpretation is substantiated by a prediction for phosphorene.
Diverse parallel stitched two-dimensional heterostructures are synthesized, including metal-semiconductor (graphene-MoS2), semiconductor-semiconductor (WS2-MoS2), and insulator-semiconductor (hBN-MoS2), directly through selective sowing of aromatic molecules as the seeds in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Our methodology enables the large-scale fabrication of lateral heterostructures with arbitrary patterns, and clean and precisely aligned interfaces, which offers tremendous potential for its application in integrated circuits.