In this work, we report an ab initio investigation based on density functional theory of the structural, energetic and electronic properties of 2D layered chalcogenides compounds based in the combination of the transition-metals (Ti, Zr, Hf, V, Nb, Ta, Cr, Mo, W and chalcogenides (S, Se, Te) in three polymorphic phases: trigonal prismatic (2H), octahedral (1T) and distorted octahedral (1T d ). We determined the most stable phases for each compound, verifying the existence of the 1T d phase for a small number of the compounds and we have also identified the magnetic compounds. In addition, with the determination of the exfoliation energies, we indicated the potential candidates to form one layer material and we have also found a relation between the exfoliation energy and the effective Bader charge in the metal, suggesting that when the materials present small exfoliation energy, it is due to the Coulomb repulsion between the chalcogen planes. Finally, we analyzed the electronic properties, identifying the semiconductor, semimetal and metal materials and predicting the band gap of the semiconductors. In our results, the dependence of the band gap on the d-orbital is explicit. In conclusion, we have investigated the properties of stable and metastable phases for a large set of TMD materials, and our findings may be auxiliary in the synthesis of metastable phases and in the development of new TMDs applications. arXiv:1903.08112v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Semiconductor nanowires based on non-nitride III-V compounds can be synthesized under certain growth conditions to favor the appearance of wurtzite crystal phase. Despite the reports in literature of ab initio band structures for these wurtzite compounds, we still lack effective multiband models and parameter sets that can be simply used to investigate physical properties of such systems, for instance, under quantum confinement effects. In order to address this deficiency, in this study we calculate the ab initio band structure of bulk InAs and InP in wurtzite phase and develop an 8×8 k.p Hamiltonian to describe the energy bands around Γ point. We show that our k.p model is robust and can be fitted to describe the important features of the ab initio band structure. The correct description of the spin splitting effects that arise due to the lack of inversion symmetry in wurtzite crystals, is obtained with the k-dependent spin-orbit term in the Hamiltonian, often neglected in the literature. All the energy bands display a Rashba-like spin texture for the in-plane spin expectation value. We also provide the density of states and the carrier density as functions of the Fermi energy. Alternatively, we show an analytical description of the conduction band, valid close to Γ point. The same fitting procedure is applied to the 6×6 valence band Hamiltonian. However, we find that the most reliable approach is the 8×8 k.p Hamiltonian for both compounds. The k.p Hamiltonians and parameter sets that we develop in this paper provide a reliable theoretical framework that can be easily applied to investigate electronic, transport, optical, and spin properties of InAs-and InP-based nanostructures.

The control of the relative stability between trigonal prismatic and octahedral structures in transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is an important step toward technological applications of 2D TMDs materials, where the electronic properties have a strong dependence on the structural phase and size effects. We report a density functional theory investigation of the size effect on the relative phase stability of stoichiometric (MoSe 2 ) n nanoflakes with parallelogram shape for n = 15, 63, 108, 130, 154, 192. We found that the octahedral phase adopts a distorted configuration, which is driven by the Peierls transition mechanism, and, as expected, the Mo-terminated edges of the trigonal prismatic nanoflakes exhibit a strong reconstruction. Furthermore, for the smallest nanoflakes, the octahedral phase has the lowest energy, but with increasing the nanoflake size, the trigonal prismatic phase becomes the most stable. From our results and analyses, this transition is shown to be mainly caused by a difference in edge formation energy of the two structural configurations. Although the physical trends have been obtained for MoSe 2 nanoflakes, we expect that similar trends might be observed in different 2D TMDs.

The k·p method is a successful approach to obtain band structure, optical and transport properties of semiconductors, and it depends on external parameters that are obtained either from experiments, tight binding or ab initio calculations. Despite the widespread use of the k·p method, a systematic analysis of the stability and the accuracy of its parameters is not usual in the literature. In this work, we report a theoretical framework to determine the k·p parameters from state-of-the-art hybrid density functional theory including spin-orbit coupling, providing a calculation where the gap and spin-orbit energy splitting are in agreement with the experimental values. The accuracy of the set of parameters is enhanced by fitting over several directions at once, minimizing the overall deviation from the original data. This strategy allows us to systematically evaluate the stability, preserving the accuracy of the parameters, providing a tool to determine optimal parameters for specific ranges around the Γ-point. To prove our concept, we investigate the zinc blende GaAs that shows results in excellent agreement with the most reliable data in the literature.