Tunable electronic and magnetic properties of two‐dimensional materials and their one‐dimensional derivatives

Abstract

Low‐dimensional materials exhibit many exceptional properties and functionalities which can be efficiently tuned by externally applied force or fields. Here we review the current status of research on tuning the electronic and magnetic properties of low‐dimensional carbon, boron nitride, metal‐dichalcogenides, phosphorene nanomaterials by applied engineering strain, external electric field and interaction with substrates, etc, with particular focus on the progress of computational methods and studies. We highlight the similarities and differences of the property modulation among one‐ and two‐dimensional nanomaterials. Recent breakthroughs in experimental demonstration of the tunable functionalities in typical nanostructures are also presented. Finally, prospective and challenges for applying the tunable properties into functional devices are discussed. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2016, 6:324–350. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1251For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.

Black Phosphorus Rediscovered: From Bulk Material to Monolayers

“…[61,[105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121] Firstprinciples simulations of single-layer BP predict a ZT value greater than 1a tr oom temperature and may reach 2.5 at 500 K. [108] Thehighest ZT value for bulk BP is found to be 0.72 at 800 K, which could be enhanced to 0.87 by applying an appropriate strain. [62,109,[123][124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131] BP has ag ood mechanical flexibility with ad irectiondependent Youngsm odulus [ ** ] that is one order of magnitude smaller than those of other 2D layered materials (i.e. [106] BP belongs to ag roup of materials known as topological insulators.…”

“…[122] Consequently,these effects render the magnetic properties highly anisotropic,a sb oth diamagnetic and paramagnetic behavior can be observed depending on the orientation in the magnetic field. [62,109,[123][124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131] BP has ag ood mechanical flexibility with ad irectiondependent Youngsm odulus [ ** ] that is one order of magnitude smaller than those of other 2D layered materials (i.e. 1TPa for graphene).…”

The rise of two‐dimensional van der Waals ferroelectrics

“…Herein, the 2D van der Waals (vdW) materials, like graphene (Castro Neto, Guinea, Peres, Novoselov, & Geim, ; Novoselov et al, ), transition‐metal dichalcogenide (Radisavljevic, Radenovic, Brivio, Giacometti, & Kis, ) and phosphorene (Li et al, ; Liu et al, ), with atomic thickness, high mobility, and high on/off ratio when used as transistors, are promising candidates to replace the current semiconductor materials in microelectronic devices that sustain the Moore's Law for longer times. Nevertheless, it is even more challenging to achieve 2D FM semiconductors (Feng et al, ; Li & Wu, ; Li & Yang, ; Tang, Zhou, & Chen, ; Zhang et al, ) compared with 3D (three‐dimensional) DMS because doping magnetic ions into 2D materials like graphene or phosphorene is much more difficult than replacing Ga in GaAs or Zn in ZnO by 3 d magnetic ions like Cr or Mn. Meanwhile, the saturation magnetization, along with the magnetic anisotropy energy, would be much lower (Wu, Zeng, & Jena, ) than 3 d magnetism in 3D DMS.…”

Quantum valley Hall effect in wide-gap semiconductor SiC monolayer

“…After successful preparation of graphene and discovery of its intriguing properties such as a massless Dirac fermion-like behavior of charge carriers at the Fermi level (E F ) and the quantum spin Hall effect under spin-orbit interaction [1][2][3] , a great deal of attention has been paid to the two-dimensional (2D) materials of honeycomb structure [4][5][6] . Graphene, silicene, germanene and stannene are monatomic 2D materials of group IV elements 4,7 .…”