No Arabic abstract
Pairing of $pi$ electronic state structures with functional or metallic atoms makes them possible to engineer physical and chemical properties. Herein, we predict the reorientation of magnetization of Co on hexagonal BN (h-BN) and graphene multilayers. The driving mechanism is the formation of the tetrahedral bonding between sp$^3$ and d orbitals at the interface. More specifically, the intrinsic $pi$-bonding of h-BN and graphene is transformed to sp$^3$ as a result of strong hybridization with metallic $d_{z^2}$ orbital. The different features of these two tetrahedral bondings, sp$^2$ and sp$^3$, are well manifested in charge density and density of states in the vicinity of the interface, along with associated band structure near the $bar{K}$ valley. Our findings provide a novel approach to tailoring magnetism by means of degree of the interlayer hybrid bonds in 2D layered materials.
Searching for novel two-dimensional (2D) materials is crucial for the development of the next generation technologies such as electronics, optoelectronics, electrochemistry and biomedicine. In this work, we designed a series of 2D materials based on endohedral fullerenes, and revealed that many of them integrate different functions in a single system, such as ferroelectricity with large electric dipole moments, multiple magnetic phases with both strong magnetic anisotropy and high Curie temperature, quantum spin Hall effect or quantum anomalous Hall effect with robust topologically protected edge states. We further proposed a new style topological field-effect transistor. These findings provide a strategy of using fullerenes as building blocks for the synthesis of novel 2D materials which can be easily controlled with a local electric field.
Two-dimensional (2D) ferromagnets have recently drawn extensive attention, and here we study the electronic structure and magnetic properties of the bulk and monolayer of CrSBr, using first-principles calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that bulk CrSBr is a magnetic semiconductor and has the easy magnetization b-axis, hard c-axis, and intermediate a-axis. Thus, the experimental triaxial magnetic anisotropy (MA) is well reproduced here, and it is identified to be the joint effects of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. We find that bulk CrSBr has a strong ferromagnetic (FM) intralayer coupling but a marginal interlayer one. We also study CrSBr monolayer in detail and find that the intralayer FM exchange persists and the shape anisotropy has a more pronounced contribution to the MA. Using the parameters of the FM exchange and the triaxial MA, our Monte Carlo simulations show that CrSBr monolayer has Curie temperature Tc = 175 K. Moreover, we find that a uniaxial tensile (compressive) strain along the a (b) axis would further increase the Tc.
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.
Quantum spin-Hall insulators (QSHIs), i.e., two-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) with a symmetry-protected band inversion, have attracted considerable scientific interest in recent years. In this work, we have computed the topological Z2 invariant for 220 functionalized honeycomb lattices that are isoelectronic to functionalized graphene. Besides confirming the TI character of well-known materials such as functionalized stanene, our study identifies 45 yet unreported QSHIs. We applied a compressed-sensing approach to identify a physically meaningful descriptor for the Z2 invariant that only depends on the properties of the materials constituent atoms. This enables us to draw a map of materials, in which metals, trivial insulators, and QSHI form distinct regions. This analysis yields fundamental insights in the mechanisms driving topological transitions. The transferability of the identified model is explicitly demonstrated for an additional set of honeycomb lattices with different functionalizations that are not part of the original set of 220 graphene-type materials used to identify the descriptor. In this class, we predict 74 more novel QSHIs that have not been reported in literature yet.
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.