Tuan V. Vuab,
Huynh V. Phuc
c,
Sohail Ahmadd,
Bui D. Hoi
e,
Nguyen V. Hieu*f,
Samah Al-Qaisig,
A. I. Kartamyshevab and
Nguyen N. Hieu
*hi
aDivision of Computational Physics, Institute for Computational Science, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. E-mail: vuvantuan@tdtu.edu.vn
bFaculty of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
cDivision of Theoretical Physics, Dong Thap University, Cao Lanh, 870000, Viet Nam
dDepartment of Physics, College of Science, King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: sohail@kku.edu.sa
ePhysics Department, University of Education, Hue University, Hue, Viet Nam
fPhysics Department, The University of Danang–University of Science and Education, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam. E-mail: nvhieu@ued.udn.vn
gPalestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Nablus, Palestine. E-mail: samah.qaisi@gmail.com
hInstitute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam. E-mail: hieunn@duytan.edu.vn
iFaculty of Natural Sciences, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, 550000, Viet Nam
First published on 28th April 2022
Due to the broken vertical symmetry, the Janus material possesses many extraordinary physico-chemical and mechanical properties that cannot be found in original symmetric materials. In this paper, we study in detail the structural, electronic, and transport properties of 1T Janus PdXO monolayers (X = S, Se, Te) by means of density functional theory. PdXO monolayers are observed to be stable based on the analysis of the vibrational characteristics and molecular dynamics simulations. All three PdXO structures exhibit semiconducting characteristics with indirect bandgap based on evaluations with hybrid functional Heyd–Scuseria–Ernzerhof (HSE06). The influences of the spin–orbit coupling (SOC) on the band diagram of PdXO are strong. Particularly, when the SOC is included, PdTeO is calculated to be metallic by the HSE06+SOC approach. With high electron mobility, Janus PdXO structures have good potential for applications in future nanodevices.
In 2017, the asymmetric Janus TMD MoSSe has been experimentally reported,15,16 opening a new approach in the study of 2D layered structures. Immediately, many other 2D Janus structures were built and calculated using different theoretical and simulation methods.17–21 Due to the lacking of vertical symmetry, the symmetric structure of the Janus materials is reduced and is responsible for the appearance of many superior physical properties that cannot be observed in symmetric structures.22–24 The Janus In2SeTe, which can be built from InSe monolayer, possesses transport characteristics that are superior to InSe.22 Recently, the 1T pristine and Janus structures of the group VIII B dichalcogenides, including MX2 and MXY with M = Pt, Pd and X/Y are chalcogen elements, have received intensive attention because they have extraordinary physical characteristics with great potential applications in nanotechnology, such as thermoelectric devices or water splitting applications.25–27 However, although oxygen is a group VI element, studies have often focused on layered compounds based on chalcogen elements Se, Se, and Te. Particularly, recent studies have shown that oxygen-based layered materials are stable and possess many outstanding physical properties.20,23 The oxygenation of TMDs, such as WXO28 and MoSO29 or post-transition metal monochalcogenides such as In2XO23 and Ga2XO30 have been theoretically studied by density functional theory (DFT).
In this paper, we study the structural characteristics, electronic properties, and transport properties of 1T PdXO (X = S, Se, Te) monolayer by means of DFT calculations. The paper is organized as the following: Section 2 presents the computational methods of the study. The calculated results and discussion, including atomic structure and stability, electronic properties, and transport properties, are shown in Section 3. Finally, the conclusions of the investigation is shown in Section 4.
a (Å) | dPd–X (Å) | dPd–O (Å) | φ∠Pd–O–Pd (deg) | φ∠Pd–X–Pd (deg) | Δh (Å) | Ec (eV) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PdSO | 3.34 | 2.30 | 2.16 | 93.08 | 101.18 | 2.23 | −4.57 |
PdSeO | 3.42 | 2.41 | 2.19 | 102.54 | 90.41 | 2.34 | −4.34 |
PdTeO | 3.58 | 2.56 | 2.25 | 105.59 | 88.50 | 2.40 | −4.12 |
To examine the stabilities of the considered monolayers, we first evaluate the chemical bond strength through the calculations for cohesive energy. For Janus PdXO, the cohesive energy Ec is given by:
![]() | (1) |
Our calculated results show that the cohesive Ec of three Janus monolayers is all negative. This suggests that their structure is energetically favorable. The obtained value for the cohesive energies of PdXO is also tabled in Table 1. From Table 1, we can see that the chemical bonds in PdSO are stronger than those in other structures of PdXO.
The phonon dispersions of PdXO are shown Fig. 2, which allows us to consider their dynamical stabilities. The unit-cell of PdXO has three atoms, hence, their phonon dispersions have nine phonon branches, including three acoustic branches and six optical branches. As shown in Fig. 2, the acoustic modes are split from the optical branches by a quite large gap. The vibrational characteristics depend on the element size in the compound. Vibrations will be softer for elements with high atomic mass.39 Consequently, the vibrational frequencies are downshifted as increasing the atomic size of X element as shown in Fig. 2. More importantly, no negative frequencies (soft modes) are found in the phonon dispersions of all three investigated structures, suggesting that their structure is dynamically stable.
Based on the calculations of the elastic coefficients Cij, we use Born–Huang's criteria for the mechanical stability to test the mechanical stability of the studied structures. In the case of PdXO monolayers, there is two independent constants should be calculated, namely C11 and C12, because C22 = C11 and C66 is defined by C66 = (C11 − C12)/2. By fitting the values of strain-dependent elastic energy, we can get the elastic coefficients. This approach has been previously used to estimate the stiffness coefficients of similar systems.40–42 As listed in Table 2, we can see that Cij of PdXO depends strongly on the chalcogen element. Cij decreases with increasing atomic size of X element. The stiffness coefficients of all three PdX meet the Born–Huang's criteria for mechanical stability, namely C11 > 0 and C211 − C212 > 0,43 suggesting that the mechanical stability of all three studied monolayers are confirmed.
C11 (Nm−1) | C12 (Nm−1) | C66 (Nm−1) | Y2D (Nm−1) | ν | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PdSO | 84.97 | 24.18 | 30.40 | 78.09 | 0.29 |
PdSeO | 63.92 | 18.44 | 22.75 | 58.61 | 0.29 |
PdTeO | 19.09 | 1.83 | 8.63 | 18.91 | 0.10 |
Young's modulus Y2D and Poisson's ratio ν for PdXO monolayers are given by43
![]() | (2) |
![]() | (3) |
It is found that, as listed in Table 2, Janus PdXO monolayers have small Young's modulus, from 18.91 to 58.09 N m−1. We can see that Y2D of PdXO is less than that of other 2D layered nanostructures, such as graphene (340 N m−1),44 MoS2 (130 N m−1),45 Janus MoSSe (113 N m−1),46 or Janus Ga2SO (155 N m−1).30 This suggests that Janus PdXO monolayers possess high flexibility and can be distorted with large amplitude.
Further, we also consider the thermal stability of PdXO monolayers, which is important when using these materials in real nanodevices. The thermal stability of PdXO is checked at room temperature (300 K) based on AIMD simulations. All structures are heated at room temperature within 6 ps by 6000 time-steps. In Fig. 3, we show the AIMD simulations for the time-dependence of the total energy at room temperature of all three Janus monolayers PdXO. It is found that the total energy fluctuates slightly during the heating period. Also, no significant distortion was detected and the structure of the Janus monolayers was still robust throughout the thermal investigation, implying that PdXO structures are thermally stable at room temperature.
![]() | ||
Fig. 4 Band diagrams (a) PdSe, (b) PdSeO, and (c) PdTeO at the PBE (left panel) and HSE06 (right panel) levels. |
EPBEg | EHSE06g | EHSE06+SOCg | ΔΦ | ΦX | ΦO | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PdSO | 0.91 | 1.81 | 1.68 | 2.02 | 5.54 | 7.75 |
PdSeO | 0.46 | 1.23 | 0.98 | 2.75 | 4.84 | 7.59 |
PdTeO | Metal | 0.36 | Metal | 3.08 | 4.40 | 7.49 |
For the compound-based heavy element, such as Se or Te, the effect of SOC on the electronic properties is important. The band structures of PdXO calculated by the HSE06+SOC approach are illustrated in Fig. 5. We can observe that the band structures of PdX monolayers are substantially changed when the SOC is included. At the VBM and CBM, the spin degeneracy is removed owing to the SOC effect. The band splitting has been observed in the band structures of PdXO, especially in the cases of PdSe and PdTeO monolayers. The calculated band gap of PdSe and PdSeO by the HSE06+SOC method is found to be 1.68 and 0.923 eV, much smaller than their HSE06 band gap as listed in Table 3. Particularly, the Janus PdTeO monolayer becomes a metal when the SOC effect is taken into account.
To get insights into the nature of the formation of the energy electronic bands as well as the atomic orbital contributions to the electronic bands, we evaluate the weighted bands of PdXO by using the HSE06 functional as shown in Fig. 6. It is demonstrated that the VBM of PdXO is highly donated by the O-p orbitals. Compared with the O-p contribution, the contribution of orbitals of Pd and X atoms to the valence band is smaller. Meanwhile, the Pd-d orbitals have a significant contribution to the CBM.
One of key parameters of electronic materials is work function Φ. Based on the work function, we can determine the conditions for the electrons to escape from the surface of the material. We can determine Φ via the Fermi level ΦF and vacuum level Φvac as the following:
Φ = Φvac − ΦF | (4) |
Due to the vertical asymmetric structure, there is an internal electric field existing in the Janus monolayer. Fig. 7 presents the planar electrostatic potential with dipole correction of PdXO. The distinct vacuum level difference ΔΦ depends on the electronegativity of atomic layers on the two sides. It is found that ΔΦ increases with the increase of the difference in atomic size between X and O atoms. As listed in Table 3, ΔΦ increases from 2.02 to 3.08 eV as X moves from S to Te. In each structure, the work function on the X side (ΦX) is smaller than the work function on the O side (ΦO).
![]() | ||
Fig. 7 Planar electrostatic potential with dipole correction of PdXO (X = S, Se, Te). The difference in vacuum level between the X and O sides is denoted by ΔΦ. |
![]() | (5) |
The effective masses of carriers are quantity that depends on the band structure of near the c band-edges and we can obtain the effective masses by fitting linearly function to the CBM (electrons) and VBM (holes) via the formula as:
![]() | (6) |
As shown in eqn (7), it reveals that, the flatter the bands near the CBM/VBM (large curvature radius), the greater the effective masses of the carriers. The obtained results for the carrier effective mass m* are presented in Table 4. It is found that the effective mass is directionally isotropic for all studied structures. However, the electron effective mass is much smaller than effective mass of holes
, suggesting that the electrons respond to the external field faster and their mobility can be higher. The
of PdSO is calculated to be 0.70m0, higher than that of both PdSe and PdTe as listed in Table 4.
Cx2D | Cy2D | Exd | Eyd | μx | μy | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PdSO | Electron | 0.70 | 0.70 | 67.30 | 68.76 | −3.78 | −3.84 | 94.97 | 94.12 |
Hole | 2.59 | 2.59 | 67.30 | 68.76 | −3.50 | −2.44 | 21.91 | 45.92 | |
PdSeO | Electron | 0.57 | 0.57 | 58.80 | 59.10 | −3.08 | −3.11 | 215.90 | 212.29 |
Hole | 2.43 | 2.43 | 58.80 | 59.10 | −3.58 | −2.54 | 25.08 | 50.09 | |
PdTeO | Electron | 0.41 | 0.41 | 45.03 | 43.76 | −8.70 | −2.56 | 593.37 | 515.18 |
Hole | 7.02 | 7.02 | 45.03 | 43.76 | −3.75 | −2.68 | 4.04 | 7.68 |
As shown in eqn (4), the mobility of carriers depends also on the elastic modulus C2D and deformation potential constant Ed. The elastic modulus C2D is written as
![]() | (7) |
The deformation potential constant Ed is calculated as:
![]() | (8) |
In Fig. 8, we present the obtained results for band-edge positions under small strain. It is found that there is no significant difference in the positions of band-edge between the x- and y-directions for PdSO and PdSeO. Meanwhile, there is a significant difference in the VBM position between the x- and y-directions in the case of PdTeO (about 0.01 eV at the uniaxial strain of ±1%). This leads to the difference between Exd and Eyd of PdTeO monolayer. The obtained results for C2D and Ed are tabled in Table 4.
![]() | ||
Fig. 8 Strain-dependence of band-edge positions of PdXO structures along the two transport directions x and y. |
The obtained results for the mobility of carriers of PdXO monolayers μx and μy are tabled in Table 4. It is indicated that the mobility of the electron is much higher than that of the hole. This is because the electron mass is much smaller than the hole mass as above-mentioned. PdXO monolayers exhibit high electron mobility, up to 593.37 cm2 V−1 s−1 for PdTeO. The electron mobility of PdSO and PdSeO is highly directional isotropic, while the mobility of electron along the x direction of while PdTeO is slightly higher than that along the y direction. This is due to the significant difference in the Ed value between the two transport directions. Such slight anisotropy in carrier mobility has also been reported in the 2D isotropic structure WSiGeN4.48 It is noted that MoS2 monolayer with the mobility of the electrons of 200 cm2 V−1 s−1 was a perfect candidate for application in electronic nanodevices.49 Hence, with high electron mobility, PdXO monolayers have great potential for applications in next-generation electronic nanodevices.
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