Metal-dioxide & metal-dichalcogenide monolayers are studied by means of Density Functional Theory. For an accurate reproduction of the electronic structure of transition metal systems, the spin orbit interaction is considered by using fully relativistic pseudopotentials (FRUP). The electronic and spin properties of MX2 (M = Sc, Cr, Mn, Ni, Mo & W and X = O, S, Se & Te) were obtained with FRUP, compared with the scalar relativistic pseudopotentials (SRUP) and with the available experimental results. Among the differences between FRUP and SRUP calculations are giant splittings of the valence band, substantial band gap reductions and semiconductor to metal or non-magnetic to magnetic “transitions”. MoO2, MoS2, MoSe2, MoTe2, WO2, WS2 and WSe2 are proposed as candidates for spintronics, while CrTe2, with μ ~ 1.59 μB, is a magnetic metal to be experimentally explored.

Quasi one-dimensional nanoribbons are excellent candidates for nanoelectronics and as electrocatalysts in hydrogen evolution reactions, therefore here we investigate by means of density functional theory the structure and electronic properties of a new kind of 1D ribbons, namely: centered honeycomb NiSe 2 nanoribbons. Depending on the crystallography and atomic composition of the edges, these ribbons can belong to one of six (two) zigzag (armchair) families. In the zigzag families, after edge reconstruction, all the bare ribbons are metallic. The influence of edge hydrogen passivation produces band gaps in two of the six

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In this work we review our new methods to computer generate amorphous atomic topologies of several binary alloys: SiH, SiN, CN; binary systems based on group IV elements like SiC; the GeSe2 chalcogenide; aluminum-based systems: AlN and AlSi, and the CuZr amorphous alloy. We use an ab initio approach based on density functionals and computationally thermally-randomized periodically-continued cells with at least 108 atoms. The computational thermal process to generate the amorphous alloys is the undermelt-quench approach, or one of its variants, that consists in linearly heating the samples to just below their melting (or liquidus) temperatures, and then linearly cooling them afterwards. These processes are carried out from initial crystalline conditions using short and long time steps. We find that a step four-times the default time step is adequate for most of the simulations. Radial distribution functions (partial and total) are calculated and compared whenever possible with experimental results, and the agreement is very good. For some materials we report studies of the effect of the topological disorder on their electronic and vibrational densities of states and on their optical properties.

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