No Arabic abstract
Very recently, two new hexagonal rhenium sub-nitrides Re3N and Re2N, which belong to a rather rare group of known metal-rich (M/N > 1) nitrides of heavy 4d,5d metals, have been successfully synthesized, and their potential technological applications as ultra-incompressible materials have been proposed. In this work we present a detailed ab initio study of novel rhenium sub-nitrides in comparison with hcp-Re and wurtzite-like rhenium mono-nitride ReN, with the purpose to evaluate the trends of the elastic, electronic properties and chemical bonding in the series of these hexagonal systems as a function of the Re/N stoichiometry: Re rightarrow Re3N rightarrow Re2N rightarrow ReN.
By means of first-principles calculations, the structural stability, mechanical properties and electronic structure of the newly synthesized incompressible Re2C, Re2N, Re3N and an analogous compound Re3C have been investigated. Our results agree well with the available experimental and theoretical data. The proposed Re3C is shown to be energetically, mechanically and dynamically stable and also incompressible. Furthermore, it is suggested that the incompressibility of these compounds is originated from the strong covalent bonding character with the hybridization of 5d orbital of Re and the 2p orbital of C or N, and a zigzag topology of interconnected bonds, e.g., Re-Re, Re-C or Re-N bonding.
Atomic-scale investigation on mechanical behaviors is highly necessary to fully understand the fracture mechanics especially of brittle materials, which are determined by atomic-scale phenomena (e.g., lattice trapping). Here, exfoliated anisotropic rhenium disulfide (ReS2) flakes are used to investigate atomic-scale crack propagation depending on the propagation directions. While the conventional strain-stress curves exhibit a strong anisotropy depending on the cleavage direction of ReS2, but our experimental results show a reduced cleavage anisotropy due to the lattice reconstruction in [100] cracking with high resistance to fracture. In other words, [010] and [110] cracks with low barriers to cleavage exhibit the ultimate sharpness of the crack tip without plastic deformation, whereas [100] cracks drive lattice rotation on one side of the crack, leading to a non-flat grain boundary formation. Finally, crystallographic reconstruction associated with the high lattice randomness of two-dimensional materials drives to a modified cleavage tendency, further indicating the importance of atomic-scale studies for a complete understanding of the mechanics.
Laser heating of rhenium in a diamond anvil cell to 3000 K at about 200 GPa results in formation of two previously unknown rhenium carbides, hexagonal WC-type structured ReC and orthorhombic TiSi2-type structured ReC2. The Re-C slid solution formed at multimegabar pressure has the carbon content of ca. 20 at%. Unexpectedly long C-C distances (ca. 1.76-1.85 A) in graphene-like carbon nets in the structure of ReC2 cannot be explained by a simple covalent bonding between carbon atoms and suggest that at very high pressures the mechanism of interaction between carbon atoms in inorganic compounds may be different from that considered so far.
Single crystals of KSbO3-type rhenium oxides, La4Re6O$19, Pb6Re6O19, Sr2Re3O9 and Bi3Re3O11, were synthesized by a hydrothermal method. Their crystal structures can be regarded as a network of three-dimensional orthogonal-dimer lattice of edge-shared ReO6 octahedra. All of them exhibit small magnitude of Pauli paramagnetism, indicating metallic electronic states without strong electron correlations. The resistivity of these rhenates, except Bi3Re3O11, have a temperature dependence of $rho(T)=rho_{0}+AT^{n}$ $(n approx 1.6)$ in a wide temperature range between 5 K and 300 K, which is extraordinary for three-dimensional metals without strong electron correlations. The resistivity of Bi3Re3O11 shows an anomaly around at 50 K, where the magnetic susceptibility also detects a deviation from ordinary Pauli paramagnetism.
Transition metal surfaces catalyse a broad range of thermally-activated reactions involving carbon-containing-species -- from atomic carbon to small hydrocarbons or organic molecules, and polymers. These reactions yield well-separated phases, for instance graphene and the metal surface, or, on the contrary, alloyed phases, such as metal carbides. Here, we investigate carbon phases on a rhenium (0001) surface, where the former kind of phase can transform into the latter. We find that this transformation occurs with increasing annealing time, which is hence not suitable to increase the quality of graphene. Our scanning tunneling spectroscopy and reflection high-energy electron diffraction analysis reveal that repeated short annealing cycles are best suited to increase the lateral extension of the structurally coherent graphene domains. Using the same techniques and with the support of density functional theory calculations, we next unveil, in real space, the symmetry of the many variants (two six-fold families) of a rhenium surface carbide observed with diffraction since the 1970s, and finally propose models of the atomic details. One of these models, which nicely matches the microscopy observations, consists of parallel rows of eight aligned carbon trimers with a so-called $(7timessqrt{mathrm{19}})$ unit cell with respect to Re(0001).