The newest members of a two-dimensional material family, involving transition metal carbides and nitrides (called MXenes), have garnered increasing attention due to their tunable electronic and thermal properties depending on the chemical composition and functionalization. This flexibility can be exploited to fabricate efficient electrochemical energy storage (batteries) and energy conversion (thermoelectric) devices. In this study, we calculated the Seebeck coefficients and lattice thermal conductivity values of oxygen terminated M2CO2 (where M = Ti, Zr, Hf, Sc) monolayer MXene crystals in two different functionalization configurations (model-II (MD-II) and model-III (MD-III)), using density functional theory and Boltzmann transport theory. We estimated the thermoelectric figure-of-merit, zT, of these materials by two different approaches, as well. First of all, we found that the structural model (i.e. adsorption site of oxygen atom on the surface of MXene) has a paramount impact on the electronic and thermoelectric properties of MXene crystals, which can be exploited to engineer the thermoelectric properties of these materials. The lattice thermal conductivity κl, Seebeck coefficient and zT values may vary by 40% depending on the structural model. The MD-III configuration always has the larger band gap, Seebeck coefficient and zT, and smaller κl as compared to the MD-II structure due to a larger band gap, highly flat valence band and reduced crystal symmetry in the former. The MD-III configuration of Ti2CO2 and Zr2CO2 has the lowest κl as compared to the same configuration of Hf2CO2 and Sc2CO2. Among all the considered structures, the MD-II configuration of Hf2CO2 has the highest κl, and Ti2CO2 and Zr2CO2 in the MD-III configuration have the lowest κl. For instance, while the band gap of the MD-II configuration of Ti2CO2 is 0.26 eV, it becomes 0.69 eV in MD-III. The zTmax value may reach up to 1.1 depending on the structural model of MXene.

High-performance thermoelectric materials are critical in recuperating the thermal losses in various machinery and promising in renewable energy applications. In this respect, the search for novel thermoelectric materials has attracted...

Recent experiments revealed that monolayer α-RuCl 3 can be obtain by chemical exfoliation method and exfoliation or restacking of nanosheets can manipulate the magnetic properties of the materials. In this present paper, the electronic and magnetic properties of α-RuCl 3 monolayer are investigated by combining first-principles calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. From first-principles calculations, we found that the spin configuration FM corresponds to the ground state for α-RuCl 3 , however, the other excited zigzag oriented spin configuration has energy of 5 meV/atom higher than the ground state. Energy band gap has been obtained as 3 meV using PBE functionals. When spin-orbit coupling effect is taken into account, corresponding energy gap is determined to be as 57 meV. We also investigate the effect of Hubbard U energy terms on the electronic band structure of α-RuCl 3 monolayer and revealed band gap increases approximately linear with increasing U value. Moreover, spin-spin coupling terms (J 1 , J 2 , J 3 ) have been obtained using first principles calculations. By benefiting from these terms, Monte Carlo simulations with single site update Metropolis algorithm have been implemented to elucidate magnetic properties of the considered system. Thermal variations of magnetization, susceptibility and also specific heat curves indicate that monolayer α-RuCl 3 exhibits a phase transition between ordered and disordered phases at the Curie temperature 14.21 K. We believe that this study can be utilized to improve two-dimensional magnet materials.

Theoretical and experimental studies present that metal halogens in MX3 forms can show very interesting electronic and magnetic properties in their bulk and monolayer phases. Many MX3 materials have layered structures in their bulk phases, while RuBr3 and RuI3 have one-dimensional chains in plane. In this paper, we show that these metal halogens can also form two-dimensional layered structures in the bulk phase similar to other metal halogens, and cleavage energy values confirm that the monolayers of RuX3 can be possible to be synthesised. We also find that monolayers of RuX3 prefer ferromagnetic spin orientation in the plane for Ru atoms. Their ferromagnetic ground state, however, changes to antiferromagnetic zigzag state after U is included. Calculations using PBE+U with SOC predict indirect band gap of 0.70 eV and 0.32 eV for the optimized structure of RuBr3 and RuI3, respectively. Calculation based on the Monte Carlo simulations reveal interesting magnetic properties of RuBr3, such as large Curie temperature against RuI3, both in bulk and monolayer cases. Moreover, as a result of varying exchange couplings between neighboring magnetic moments, magnetic properties of RuBr3 and RuI3 can undergo drastic changes from bulk to monolayer. We hope our findings can be useful to attempt to fabricate the bulk and monolayer of RuBr3 and RuI3.

The electronic and magnetic properties of a material can be altered by strain engineering. We elucidate the strain dependence of electronic and magnetic properties in α-RuCl 3 monolayer by varying the biaxial in-plane tensile strain from 1% to 8%. The magnetic ground state of the α-RuCl 3 monolayer evolves from antiferromagnetic zigzag (AFM-ZZ) configuration to ferromagnetic (FM) under a biaxial in-plane tensile strain higher than 2%. In a strain-free state, the FM configuration has a direct bandgap of 0.54 eV, and the AFM-ZZ configuration has an indirect bandgap of 0.73 eV. The energy bandgap of the α-RuCl 3 monolayer undergoes a change by the variation of the tensile strain. Furthermore, a detailed Monte Carlo simulation has been implemented to investigate the magnetic properties of the considered system for varying values of tensile strain. Temperature dependencies of the thermodynamic quantities of interest as functions of strains display strong evidence supporting the firstprinciples calculations within density functional theory. Our Monte Carlo findings also suggest that the Curie temperature of the α-RuCl 3 monolayer tends to get higher up to 20.11 K with a tensile strain 8%, which means that applying a strain leads to getting a more stable FM ground state. In addition, we find that magnetocrystalline anisotropy in the α-RuCl 3 monolayer can be controlled by the applied strain.