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Two-dimensional tellurium

Materials that consist of just one or a few layers of atoms could have a range of useful applications. Computer simulations now show that the element tellurium might form three such phases, and that they have potentially useful properties.
  1. Evan J. Reed

    1. Evan J. Reed is in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

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The discovery of graphene1, a material that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, triggered intense research effort and garnered the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. Graphene’s remarkable properties suggested that it could be used for a diverse range of scientific and engineering applications, ranging from studies of exotic forms of quantum ‘tunnelling’ behaviour of particles, to the development of touchscreens and composite plastics. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Zhu et al.2 suggest that almost atomically thin materials can also be made from tellurium atoms. The potential existence of these two-dimensional materials was revealed by computational simulations, reflecting the increasingly powerful role of such methods in guiding the search for new materials.

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Nature 552, 40-41 (2017)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-017-07159-y

References

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