September 17, 2021
In this work, we foresee the structure of a new class of borophenes with smaller 2D densities of atoms than those explored so far for 2D boron crystals. Boron atoms in the porous borophenes tend to be $5$-coordinated in contrast to commonly investigated structures with hexagonal holes for which the number of nearest neighbors of each atom varies from $3$ to $6$. High metallic character is the usual feature of borophenes, however, we have also identified a semimetallic borophe...
April 23, 2020
Monolayer AlB$_2$ is composed of two atomic layers: honeycomb borophene and triangular aluminum. In contrast with the bulk phase, monolayer AlB$_2$ is predicted to be a superconductor with a high critical temperature. Here, we demonstrate that monolayer AlB$_2$ can be synthesized on Al(111) via molecular beam epitaxy. Our theoretical calculations revealed that the monolayer AlB$_2$ hosts several Dirac cones along the $\Gamma$--M and $\Gamma$--K directions; these Dirac cones a...
July 28, 2016
Recently, two-dimensional boron sheets have attracted a lot of attentions owing to their structural polymorphs and outstanding properties. And, due to chemical complexity and electron deficiency of B atoms, the 2D boron sheets are easy affected by the environment. So, exploring novel 2D boron oxides gets highly needed. In this study, we theoretically explored 2D boron oxides structures and their basic properties. We found 2D boron oxides are metals or semimetals, when oxygen ...
June 3, 2013
The study of graphene, since its discovery around 2004, is possibly the largest and fastest growing field of research in material science, because of its exotic mechanical, thermal, electronic, optical and chemical properties. The studies of graphene have also led to further research in exploring the field of two dimensional (2D) systems in general. For instance, a number of other 2D crystals (not based on carbon, e.g., boronitrene, silicone, graphane, etc.) have been synthes...
December 5, 2020
Moving beyond traditional 2D materials is now desirable to have switching capabilities (e.g., transistors). Here we propose using borophene because, as we will show in this letter, obtaining regions of the electronic bandstructure which act as valence and conduction bands, with an apparent bandgap, may be obtainable in the foreseeable future. Here for particular allotropes of borophene, density of states (DOS) and electronic bandstructure diagrams with E(k) vs k are found wit...
October 21, 2015
Recently, several new materials exhibiting massless Dirac fermions have been proposed. However, many of these do not have the typical graphene honeycomb lattice, which is often associated with Dirac cones. Here, we present a classification of these different two-dimensional Dirac systems based on the space groups, and discuss our findings within the context of a minimal two-band model. In particular, we show that the emergence of massless Dirac fermions can be attributed to t...
January 2, 2016
Borophene (two-dimensional boron sheet) is a new type of two-dimensional material, which was recently grown successfully on single crystal Ag substrates. In this paper, we investigate the electronic structure and bonding characteristics of borophene by first-principle calculations. The band structure of borophene shows highly anisotropic metallic behaviour. The obtained optical properties of borophene exhibit strong anisotropy as well. The combination of high optical transpar...
June 20, 2019
Two-dimensional (2D) Dirac-like electron gases have attracted tremendous research interest ever since the discovery of free-standing graphene. The linear energy dispersion and non-trivial Berry phase play the pivotal role in the remarkable electronic, optical, mechanical and chemical properties of 2D Dirac materials. The known 2D Dirac materials are gapless only within certain approximations, for example, in the absence of SOC. Here we report a route to establishing robust Di...
February 15, 2022
Principles of design to create dynamically stable transition metal, lanthanide, and actinide based low-dimensional borides are presented. A charge transfer analysis of donor metal atoms to electron deficient honeycombed B lattices allows to predict complex covalent heterostructures hosting Dirac states. The applicable guidelines are supported with the analysis of phonon spectra computed with first-principles calculations to demonstrate the physical stability of nanometer-thic...
December 16, 2015
Boron is the fifth element in the periodic table and possesses rich chemistry second only to carbon. A striking feature of boron is that B12 icosahedral cages occur as the building blocks in bulk boron and many boron compounds. This is in contrast to its neighboring element, carbon, which prefers 2D layered structure (graphite) in its bulk form. On the other hand, boron clusters of medium size have been predicted to be planar or quasi-planar, such as B12+ , B13+, B19-, B36, a...