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Two-dimensional materials from high-throughput computational exfoliation of experimentally known compounds

Nature Nanotechnology volume 13, pages 246–252 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have emerged as promising candidates for next-generation electronic and optoelectronic applications. Yet, only a few dozen 2D materials have been successfully synthesized or exfoliated. Here, we search for 2D materials that can be easily exfoliated from their parent compounds. Starting from 108,423 unique, experimentally known 3D compounds, we identify a subset of 5,619 compounds that appear layered according to robust geometric and bonding criteria. High-throughput calculations using van der Waals density functional theory, validated against experimental structural data and calculated random phase approximation binding energies, further allowed the identification of 1,825 compounds that are either easily or potentially exfoliable. In particular, the subset of 1,036 easily exfoliable cases provides novel structural prototypes and simple ternary compounds as well as a large portfolio of materials to search from for optimal properties. For a subset of 258 compounds, we explore vibrational, electronic, magnetic and topological properties, identifying 56 ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems, including half-metals and half-semiconductors.

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Fig. 1: Screening for low-dimensional manifolds in a parent 3D crystal.
Fig. 2: Binding energies of the bulk 3D compounds identified as geometrically layered.
Fig. 3: Statistics on the 2D and 3D databases.
Fig. 4: The most common 2D structural prototypes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the MARVEL National Centre of Competence in Research of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Simulation time was provided by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) under project IDs s580, mr0 and ch3, amounting to 60,000 DFT calculations and 5 million core hours. D.C., A.Ma. and N.Ma. gratefully acknowledge support from the EU Centre of Excellence MaX ‘MAterials design at the eXascale’ (grant no. 676598). D.C. acknowledges support from the ‘EPFL Fellows’ fellowship programme co-funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Horizon 2020 grant agreement no. 665667. The authors would also like to acknowledge useful discussions with F. Ambrosio, and thank M. Giantomassi, M. J. van Setten and G. M. Rignanese for providing their fully relativistic ONCV pseudopotentials (https://github.com/abinit/pseudo_dojo).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Nicolas Mounet, Marco Gibertini, Philippe Schwaller, Davide Campi, Andrius Merkys, Antimo Marrazzo, Thibault Sohier, Ivano Eligio Castelli, Andrea Cepellotti, Giovanni Pizzi & Nicola Marzari

  2. Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Andrius Merkys

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Contributions

M.G., G.P., N.Mo. and N.Ma. conceived the project. N.Mo., A.C., G.P., A.Me., T.S. and I.E.C. provided the necessary input, software tools and AiiDA workflows. N.Mo., P.S. and M.G. extracted and refined the structures from the source databases. P.S., N.Mo. and M.G. performed the geometrical screening of layered materials. N.Mo., D.C. and A.Ma. performed all first-principles simulations. N.Mo., M.G., G.P., D.C., A.Ma. and N.Ma. analysed the data. All authors contributed to the redaction of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nicolas Mounet or Nicola Marzari.

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Supplementary Figures 1–4, Supplementary Tables 1–6, Supplementary Structures 1–6, Supplementary References.

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Mounet, N., Gibertini, M., Schwaller, P. et al. Two-dimensional materials from high-throughput computational exfoliation of experimentally known compounds. Nature Nanotech 13, 246–252 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-017-0035-5

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