Searching for low thermal conductivity materials is crucial for thermoelectric devices. Here we report on the phonon transport properties of recently fabricated single layer antimony, antimonene [Ares, et al., Adv. Mater., 2016, 28, 6332]. Ab initio calculations in combination with the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) for phonons show that antimonene has a low lattice thermal conductivity (15.1 W m K at 300 K), indicating its potential thermoelectric applications. The low lattice thermal conductivity is due to its small group velocity, low Debye temperature and large buckling height. We also investigate in detail the mode contributions to total thermal conductivity and find at low frequency that the longitudinal acoustic (LA) branch dominates the thermal conductivity. Moreover, we show that the lattice thermal conductivity of antimonene can further be reduced by minimizing the sample size. Our findings open the field for thermoelectric applications based on antimonene.

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Owing to the natural compatibility with current semiconductor industry, silicon allotropes with diverse structural and electronic properties provide promising platforms for the next-generation Si-based devices. After screening 230 all-silicon crystals in the zeolite frameworks by first-principles calculations, we disclose two structurally stable Si allotropes (AHT-Si 24 and VFI-Si 36 ) containing open channels as topological node-line semimetals with Dirac nodal points forming a nodal loop in the k z =0 plane of Brillouin zone. Interestingly, their nodal loops protected by inversion and time-reversal symmetries are robust against SU(2) symmetry breaking due to very weak spin-orbit coupling of Si. When the nodal lines are projected onto the (001) surface, flat surface bands can be observed because of the nontrivial topology of the bulk band structures. Our discoveries extend the topological physics to the three-dimensional Si materials, highlighting the possibility to realize low-cost, nontoxic and semiconductor-compatible Si-based electronics with topological quantum states.

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