Electric field manipulation of multiple nonequivalent Dirac cones in the electronic structures of hexagonal CrB ₄ sheet

Abstract

Two-dimensional materials with Dirac cones have significant applications in photoelectric technology. The origin and manipulation of multiple Dirac cones need to be better understood. By first-principle calculations, we study the influence of external fields on the electronic structure of the hexagonal CrB 4 sheet with double nonequivalent Dirac cones. Our results show that the two cones are not sensitive to tensile strain and out-of-plane electric field, but present obviously different behaviors under the in-plane external electric field (along the B-B direction), i.e., one cone holds while the other vanishes with a gap opening. More interestingly, a new nonequivalent cone emerges under a proper in-plane electric field. We also discuss the origin of the cones in CrB 4 sheet. Our study provides a new method on how to obtain Dirac cones by the external field manipulation, which may motivate potential applications in nanoelectronics.