Tellurene: An elemental 2D monolayer material beyond its bulk phases without van der Waals layered structures

Abstract

Due to the quantum confinement effect, atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) monolayer materials possess distinct characteristics from their corresponding bulk materials, which have received wide attention from science and industry. Among all the 2D materials, elemental 2D materials with the simplest components are most striking. As an emerging group-VIA elemental 2D monolayer material, tellurene exhibits many exciting fundamental properties, such as chemical and mechanical stabilities, bandgap and high carrier mobilities compared to phosphorene, graphene and MoS2, respectively. Besides, in further exploration, it was found that tellurene or tellurene-based device presents excellent thermoelectric properties, piezoelectric properties, quantum Hall effects, and superb optical properties especially nonlinear optics characteristics, etc. The properties of tellurene can be modulated by virtue of strain, defects, edges, and heterojunction effects. In view of so many unique properties, it has drawn significant interest since tellurene was predicted and fabricated successfully in 2017. In this paper, we review the 2D tellurene allotropes, experimental preparation, excellent properties, performance modulation and future development.

Bonding, structure, and mechanical stability of 2D materials: the predictive power of the periodic table

“…261 Current interest in selenene and tellurene is based on their favorable properties, such as strong optical absorption, high carrier mobilities, excellent thermoelectric performance, piezoelectricity, high stretchability, and good environmental stability. 262,263 While to date detailed studies on interlayer bonding and structure of few-layer assemblies are lacking, such sheets have been attained experimentally. By liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) 2D Se sheets of the trigonal bulk chain-like structure with 40-120 nm lateral dimension and 3-6 nm thickness could be exfoliated by sonication.…”

Large piezoelectric and thermal expansion coefficients with negative Poisson's ratio in strain-modulated tellurene

“…Since the mechanical exfoliation of graphene 37 , researchers from all over the globe have come to terms with the possibility of extracting 2D materials from their bulk counterparts. Ultrathin Te film has already been synthesized using the different approaches such as by extracting the monolayer from the layered bulk Tellurium via liquid-phase exfoliation method or by growing Te monolayer on a substrate using the physical vapor deposition, epitaxial formation by molecular beam epitaxy and synthesis of free standing 2D Te by solution method [38][39][40][41][42][43] . Wu et al 44 constructed a 2D FET device with large drain current of 300 mA mm −1 , high mobility and high on/off ratio.…”

“…Wu et al 44 constructed a 2D FET device with large drain current of 300 mA mm −1 , high mobility and high on/off ratio. Te has superior transport properties that make it suitable for thermoelectric applications 41,43,45,46 . It has high carrier mobilities leading to good electrical conductivity and the heavy Te atoms result in flat bands towards conduction region that increase the Seebeck coefficient 47 .…”

The Recent Progress of MEMS/NEMS Resonators

“…The drum resonator is usually a thin-film structure, and the surrounding is clamped, which can realize sensing and electrical applications, especially because of its high-frequency characteristics, it can be used as an octave frequency tuning, high-frequency random switching, and self-oscillation in the circuit. Graphene has low mass and low stiffness with superior mechanical properties [ 98 ]. As a membrane resonator, it is an atomic-level ultra-thin and super-strong material that can resonate at megahertz to achieve high stochastic switching rates [ 26 ].…”