No Arabic abstract
Bandgap engineering by substituting C with B and N atoms in graphene has been shown to be a promising way to improve semiconducting properties of graphene. Such hybridized monolayers consisting of hexagonal BN phases in graphene (h-BNC) have been recently synthesized and char- acterized. In this paper, we present an ab initio density functional theory (DFT)-based study of h-BN domain size effect on band gap of mono-layer h-BNC heterostructures. The atomic structures, electronic band structures, density of states and electron localization functions of five h-BNC config- urations are examined as h-BN concentration ranged from 0 to 100%. We report that the band gap energy of h-BNC can be continuously and quadratically tuned as a function of h-BN concentration.
We study the electronic properties of h-BN/graphene/h-BN ABC-stacked trilayer systems using tight binding and DFT methods. We comment on the recent work of Ramasubramaniam et al. (arxiv:1011.2489) whose results seem to be in disagreement with our recent calculations. Detailed analysis reaffirms our previous conclusions.
We introduced a method to obtain the continuum description of the elastic properties of mono- layer h-BN through ab initio density functional theory. This thermodynamically rigorous contin- uum description of the elastic response is formulated by expanding the elastic strain energy density in a Taylor series in strain truncated after the fifth-order term. we obtained a total of fourteen nonzero independent elastic constants for the up to tenth-order tensor. We predicted the pressure dependent second-order elastic moduli. This continuum formulation is suitable for incorporation into the finite element method.
We study the formation of frequency band gaps in single column woodpile phononic crystals composed of orthogonally stacked slender cylinders. We focus on investigating the effect of the cylinders local vibrations on the dispersion of elastic waves along the stacking direction of the woodpile phononic crystals. We experimentally verify that their frequency band structures depend significantly on the bending resonant behavior of unit cells. We propose a simple theoretical model based on a discrete element method to associate the behavior of locally resonant cylindrical rods with the band gap formation mechanism in woodpile phononic crystals. The findings in this work imply that we can achieve versatile control of frequency band structures in phononic crystals by using woodpile architectures. The woodpile phononic crystals can form a new type of vibration filtering devices that offer an enhanced degree of freedom in manipulating stress wave propagation.
We report the computational investigation of a series of ternary X$_4$Y$_2$Z and X$_5$Y$_2$Z$_2$ compounds with X={Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba}, Y={P, As, Sb, Bi}, and Z={S, Se, Te}. The compositions for these materials were predicted through a search guided by machine learning, while the structures were resolved using the minima hopping crystal structure prediction method. Based on $textit{ab initio}$ calculations, we predict that many of these compounds are thermodynamically stable. In particular, 21 of the X$_4$Y$_2$Z compounds crystallize in a tetragonal structure with $textit{I-42d}$ symmetry, and exhibit band gaps in the range of 0.3 and 1.8 eV, well suited for various energy applications. We show that several candidate compounds (in particular X$_4$Y$_2$Te and X$_4$Sb$_2$Se) exhibit good photo absorption in the visible range, while others (e.g., Ba$_4$Sb$_2$Se) show excellent thermoelectric performance due to a high power factor and extremely low lattice thermal conductivities.
Two-dimensional (2D) antimony (Sb, antimonene) recently attracted interest due to its peculiar electronic properties and its suitability as anode material in next generation batteries. Sb however exhibits a large polymorphic/allotropic structural diversity, which is also influenced by the Sbs support. Thus understanding Sb heterostructure formation is key in 2D Sb integration. Particularly 2D Sb/graphene interfaces are of prime importance as contacts in electronics and electrodes in batteries. We thus study here few-layered 2D Sb/graphene heterostructures by atomic-resolution (scanning) transmission electron microscopy. We find the co-existence of two Sb morphologies: First is a 2D growth morphology of layered beta-Sb with beta-Sb(001)||graphene(001) texture. Second are one-dimensional (1D) Sb nanowires which can be matched to beta-Sb with beta-Sb[2-21] perpendicular to graphene(001) texture and are structurally also closely related to thermodynamically non-preferred cubic Sb(001)||graphene(001). Importantly, both Sb morphologies show rotational van-der-Waals epitaxy with the graphene support. Both Sb morphologies are well resilient against environmental bulk oxidation, although superficial Sb-oxide layer formation merits consideration, including formation of novel epitaxial Sb2O3(111)/beta-Sb(001) heterostructures. Exact Sb growth behavior is sensitive on employed processing and substrate properties including, notably, the nature of the support underneath the direct graphene support. This introduces the substrate underneath a direct 2D support as a key parameter in 2D Sb heterostructure formation. Our work provides insights into the rich phase and epitaxy landscape in 2D Sb and 2D Sb/graphene heterostructures.