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Tunable electronic properties of an Sb/InSe van


der Waals heterostructure by electric field effects†
Cite this: DOI: 10.1039/c8cp07407k
Zhihui Zhang,‡a Yan Zhang,‡a Zifeng Xie,a Xing Wei,a Tingting Guo,a Jibin Fan,a
Lei Ni,a Ye Tian,b Jian Liu c and Li Duan *a

The electronic properties of an Sb/InSe heterostructure are investigated by using the density functional
theory method. A type-II staggered-gap band alignment is achieved from the Sb/InSe vdW
heterostructure with the Sb layer dominates the lowest energy holes as well as the lowest energy
electrons are contributed by the InSe layer, which facilitates the spatial effective separation of
photogenerated electron–hole pairs. Additionally, an indirect–direct band gap transition can be triggered
Received 3rd December 2018, via varying the interlayer distance. More fascinatingly, the characteristic of type-II band alignment is
Accepted 11th February 2019 robust, while the band gap values are tunable with respect to a moderate external electric field, even
DOI: 10.1039/c8cp07407k leading to an intriguing semiconductor–metal transition at a strong electric field. These results are
expected to provide meaningful guidelines for the design of novel nanoelectronic and optoelectronic
rsc.li/pccp devices based on the Sb/InSe heterostructure.

1. Introduction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.14 Most importantly, the


electron mobility of InSe can reach 103 cm2 V1 s1 and
Successful fabrication of graphene has triggered a research boom 104 cm2 V1 s1 at room and liquid-helium temperatures,15
in exploring diverse types of atomically thin two-dimensional respectively, and an excellent current on/off ratio of 108 in the
(2D) materials.1 A multitude of 2D materials, such as black InSe-based FET has been achieved as well,16 indicating its great
phosphorene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), fluorogra- potential in nanoelectronic applications.
phene, g-GaN and so on, have displayed fascinating application In parallel with the efforts devoted to individual 2D materials,
in next-generation photovoltaic devices owing to their out- the van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures manufactured by
standing photoelectric properties, which have been extensively vertically stacking different 2D semiconductors have opened
researched.2–7 More recently, a group-VA elemental 2D material up new avenues for developing new materials and designing
antimonene (Sb monolayer) has attracted tremendous attention new devices.17 In such heterostructures, the relatively weak vdW
since it exhibits many advantages including high stability,8 fast interaction holds the stacking layers together and is expected to
carrier mobility (me B 630 and mh B 1737 cm2 V1 s1) and good serve as a degree of freedom to produce novel electronic properties,
thermal conductivity as well as a high electrical conductivity of and strong covalent bonds inside respective monolayers assure
104 S m1,9,10 which make it a promising material for designing in-plane stability. This practice has been testified in TMD/ZnO,
field effect transistors (FETs) and thermophotovoltaic cells.11 SiC/MoS2, graphene/CH3NH3PbI3, and g-GaN/blue phosphorene
Besides, both experimental and theoretical studies have reported heterostructures.4,5,18,19 Along with this advance, in sight of the
that the stable Sb monolayer with a b-phase structure consists of prominent properties of Sb and InSe semiconductors, recently,
Sb atoms puckered in a honeycomb lattice and has an indirect both InSe-based and Sb-based vdW heterostructures such as
band gap.12,13 Simultaneously, a newly emerging 2D layered InSe/BP,20,21 InSe/MoS2,22 antimonene/graphene and C2N/Sb
semiconductor, ultrathin indium selenide (InSe), has been have been constructed,23–25 which are considered as potential
successfully prepared in experiment. Nan et al. have demonstrated candidates for high-performance electronic and optoelectronic
the air-stability of InSe nanosheets via microphotoluminescence devices. On the one hand, there is an extraordinarily perfect
lattice match between Sb and InSe monolayers, which means it
is extremely feasible to construct an Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, 710064, in the experiment. On the other hand, their combination is
China. E-mail: liduan@chd.edu.cn
b
expected to improve the transport properties of carriers in the
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
c
School of Physics, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Sb/InSe heterostructure because of the high electron mobility
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c8cp07407k of InSe and high hole mobility of Sb. Hence, the exploration
‡ These two authors equally contributed to this work. of the fundamental electronic properties of the Sb/InSe vdW

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heterostructure is especially significant for applications in described by the standard PBE functional.28 For the geometry
electronics and optoelectronics. optimization, the energy convergence criterion was set at 1 
Nevertheless, so far few reports have focused on the electro- 105 eV per atom. The convergence criterion for the maximal
nic properties of the Sb/InSe heterostructure with an external force between atoms was 0.03 eV Å1. The maximum displace-
electric field. In this article, electronic structure tuning in a ment and the stress on each atom were set at 0.001 Å and
novel Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure is discussed for the first 0.05 GPa, respectively. The Heyd–Scuseria–Ernzerhof (HSE06)
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time by stacking single layer Sb vertically on the InSe sheet. It is hybrid functional was also adopted to check the validity of the
demonstrated that the Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure exhibits results obtained by the PBE method.29 Besides, spin–orbital-
type-II band alignment with electrons and holes respectively coupling (SOC) was expected have a significant influence on the
localized in the InSe and Sb layers. In addition, an electric field heavy atoms therefore it was considered when calculating band
is applied along the z direction as an effective way to tune the structures.30
electronic properties. The band gap of the heterostructure can
be significantly modulated by the electric field. Also, the
number of transferring electrons increases with the enhanced 3. Results and discussion
strength of the applied external electric field, no matter what 3.1 Geometric structure of the heterostructure
the direction of the electric field is. The present study may
For the free-standing low-buckled InSe and Sb, the optimized
inspire much interest in experimental research of the Sb/InSe
lattice constants are 4.06 Å and 4.09 Å, respectively, in good
vdW heterostructure and would open a new avenue for application
agreement with previous results.31,32 A supercell was used to
of the heterostructure in future nanoelectronics.
model the Sb/InSe heterostructure, comprising 2  2 primitive
cells of InSe and 2  2 primitive cells of Sb, which induces a
2. Computational methods lattice mismatch of around 0.8%, so that the Sb/InSe hetero-
structure could be easily obtained. To gain equilibrium geometry,
In our work, all the structural relaxation and electronic calculations four representative stacking models are considered along the
were accomplished using ultrasoft pseudopotential by first- horizontal direction, as presented in Fig. 1. The stacking composite
principles calculations based on DFT as implemented in the structures can transform into one another by horizontal lay sliding.
CASTEP code of Materials Studio.26 The generalized gradient It is reported that the electronic properties of the InSe monolayer are
approximation (GGA) with the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) very sensitive to other external conditions, such as strain, thus we
exchange–correlation functional was used to describe the keep the lattice parameters of the InSe monolayer fixed and stretch
exchange–correlation interaction.27 A plane wave basis set with the lattice parameters of the Sb layer.33 All configurations are under
a cutoff energy of 420 eV and a 5  5  1 k-point grid determined geometric optimization with convergence criteria in terms of both
by a good grid of the gamma-centered Monkhorst–Pack method energy and force. The corresponding parameters and band gap
in the Brillouin zone was found to give great converged results. values of the four stacking patterns after optimization are listed in
Moreover, a vacuum thickness of 18 Å was chosen to prevent Table 1. The vertical interlayer distances between InSe and Sb layers
artificial interactions in neighbouring sheets along the z direction. vary from 2.88 Å to 3.03 Å. It is noted that there are no significant
Additionally, to take the long range vdW interaction into con- changes in the In–In and the In–Se as well as the Sb–Sb bond
sideration, the correction method of Grimme’s DFT-D was length in diverse configurations, suggesting the very small atom
employed due to the fact that the weak interactions are not well rearrangements in the heterostructures. Interestingly, it is found

Fig. 1 The top and side views of the Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure with various stackings: (a) pattern H1, (b) pattern H2, (c) pattern H3, and (d) pattern H4.
The brown, yellow and purple balls represent In, Se and Sb atoms, respectively.

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Table 1 Calculated equilibrium interlayer distance d, binding energy


Eb, and bond lengths LIn–In, LIn–Se, and LSb–Sb as well as band gap Eg of
the Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure for four constructed patterns

Stacking d (Å) LIn–In (Å) LIn–Se (Å) LSb–Sb (Å) Eb (meV Å2) Eg (eV)
H1 3.00 2.80 2.66 2.87 21.76 0.636
H2 3.03 2.80 2.67 2.87 10.10 0.584
H3 2.88 2.84 2.67 2.86 23.86 0.650
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H4 2.96 2.84 2.68 2.86 22.66 0.657

that all considered structures exhibit direct band gaps with little
difference in gap values, which demonstrates that the band
structures of four different Sb/InSe stacking types are similar. Fig. 2 The calculated binding energies and band gaps of the hetero-
Binding energy is a necessary parameter reflecting the thermal structure vary as a function of the interlayer distances. The blue and red
lines represent the binding energy and band gap, respectively.
stability of the heterostructure. To quantitatively evaluate the
relative stability between the neighbouring layers, the interface
binding energy (Eb) of the Sb/InSe heterostructure is estimated as: indirect, which can be attributed to the strong interlayer inter-
ESb=InSe  ESb  EInSe action and orbital overlapping.38 Thus the electric properties of
Eb ¼ (1)
A the heterostructure with a distance of 2.7 Å should be noteworthy.
Similar phenomena have been reported in the InSe/InTe
where ESb/InSe, EInSe and ESb are the total energies of the relaxed
heterostructure.39 To further gain other properties of the Sb/InSe
Sb/InSe heterostructure, the InSe monolayer, and the Sb mono-
heterostructure, the pattern at an equilibrium interlayer distance
layer, respectively, and A is the interface area. Accordingly, the
of 2.88 Å is discussed in succeeding work.
more negative Eb value corresponds to the better stability. For
various stacking configurations, the energy differences between
them are less than 0.15 meV Å2, indicating that the stacking 3.2 Electronic properties of the heterostructure
effect has little essential influence on the interaction between For comparison, the energy band structures of isolated InSe
InSe and Sb. Furthermore, The H3 conformation has the lowest and Sb are plotted in Fig. 3(a) and (b), respectively. Monolayer
binding energy of only 23.86 meV Å2, which is close to the InSe has an indirect band gap of 1.465 eV, the VBM is located
typical vdW force of DFT calculation (around 20 meV Å2).34 at the region between the high symmetry points G and K in
Other typical vdW crystals have the same order of magnitude: the Brillouin zone, whereas the CBM is located at the high
for instance, 28.52 meV Å2 for the MoS2/AlN heterostructure symmetry point G. Meanwhile, monolayer Sb also possesses an
and 18.9 meV Å2 for the InSe/MoS2 heterostructure.35,36 There- indirect band gap of 1.227 eV, with the CBM located between
fore we only concentrate on the stacking type H3 due to its best the M and G points, and the VBM lying at G. These results are in
stability among these four stacking patterns. However, the line with the reported values for the PBE method.24,40,41 After
electronic properties of type H4 are also discussed in the ESI† constructing an Sb/InSe heterostructure, the band structures of
(Fig. S1) because it has a slightly higher binding energy than H3. both Sb and InSe layers are quite well preserved upon binding,
One effective approach to tune the electronic characteristics as depicted in Fig. 3(c). It is worthwhile that both the CBM
of the heterostructure is applying vertical strain by changing consisting of InSe and the VBM comprising Sb form a direct
the interlayer distance. Most recently, Li et al.37 studied the band gap of 0.650 eV at the G point. The band gap of the hetero-
effect of interlayer coupling for band gaps and band alignment structure is much smaller than those of any of the individual
types of the InSe/MoSe2 (WSe2) heterostructures, which are layers, which means that electron excitation of the heterostructure
beneficial for use in photoelectric sensors. Here, the binding from the VBM to the CBM is easier than those of single layers
energy and band gap of the H3 pattern as a function of the when applying visible light irradiation. Besides, the CBM and VBM
interlayer distances are calculated; the relationship curves are of the InSe layer are lower than those of the Sb layer in the energy
given in Fig. 2. One can see that the most stable interlayer aspect. As mentioned above, an intrinsic type-II alignment of the
distance is about 2.88 Å, which is also in good accordance with vdW heterostructure is formed at the Sb/InSe interface which
the result of the geometrical optimization. Such a vertical can facilitate the effective spatial separation of photogenerated
distance is larger than the sum of the covalent radii of the Sb electron–hole pairs, offering the opportunities of regarding
and In/Se atoms, with no chemical bonds at the Sb/InSe interface them as electron–hole separators. Moreover, the projected
region. In addition, the band gap can be modulated effectively by DOS of the Sb/InSe heterostructure reveals that the VBM is
the vertical strain. With the interlayer distance changing from mainly dominated by the states of the Sb layer, while the CBM is
2.8 Å to 4.5 Å, the band structures always maintain direct gaps, dominated by the states of the InSe layer. Meanwhile, according
and the band gaps decrease linearly and monotonically. This to the orbital diagram (see Fig. S2, ESI†), it can be seen that the
modulation is an interesting feature for optoelectronic devices LUMO is localized around the Sb atoms whereas the HOMO is
with high luminous efficiency. However, when the distances vary mainly around the Se atoms on the surface of the InSe layer,
from 2.0 Å to 2.7 Å, the band gaps increase slowly and turn into consistent with the DOS analysis.

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Fig. 3 (a) Band structure of monolayer InSe. (b) Band structure of the isolated monolayer Sb. (c) The projected band structure of the Sb/InSe
heterostructure and the total density of states of Sb, InSe and Sb/InSe. (d) Band alignment of the Sb/InSe heterostructure at the PBE level. The Fermi level
is represented by a black dashed line. The energy of the vacuum level is set to zero.

It is a well-known fact that the SOC effect is important for interesting transferred electrons, the Fermi level of InSe (Sb) lifts
the electronic band structure on heavy elements, so, the band upwards (downwards) and reaches the same level. Consequently,
structure calculations of the Sb monolayer, InSe monolayer, the obtained work function of the heterostructure is 4.74 eV which
and Sb/InSe heterostructure have been checked in the presence is slightly lower than that of Sb and higher than that of InSe. As a
of SOC, as shown in Fig. S3 of the ESI.† The results indicate that result, the InSe component can gather negative charges whereas
the effect of SOC on the electronic band structure is quite weak the Sb component accumulates positive charges, which means the
and can be neglected. Besides, for comparison, the HSE06 formation of an internal electric field (Eint) with its direction
hybrid functional was also employed, giving calculated band pointing from the Sb layer to the InSe layer, further resulting in
gaps of 2.14 eV for Sb, 2.29 eV for InSe, and 1.34 eV for the the drift behaviors of electrons and holes to achieve balance with
Sb/InSe heterostructure, which are consistent with the results the diffusion force.
of previous studies.8,38 The relative band structures and band When the Sb/InSe heterostructure is irradiated with light of
alignment are depicted in Fig. S4 (ESI†). It is worth mentioning a certain wavelength, some electrons can be photoexcited from
that the HSE06 functional greatly enhances the band gap and the VB to CB for both Sb and InSe layers to form electron–hole
hardly changes the shape of the electronic bands. In fact, the pairs. Referring to Fig. 3(d), right, due to the band offsets, the
standard PBE functional enables obtaining the general tendency photogenerated electrons in the Sb layer can be transferred to
of band structures, so, considering the computational cost, we the CB of the InSe layer spontaneously. In contrast, the photo-
mainly used the PBE method to explore the electronic properties generated holes in InSe can flow to the VB of the Sb layer.
of the Sb/InSe heterostructure under a series of electric fields. Eventually, the photogenerated electron–hole pairs can be
The work function, a critical parameter of an intrinsic reference effectively separated: electrons and holes reside preferably in
for band alignment, is expressed using the equation: the InSe and Sb layers, respectively, enabling the high efficiency
of the photovoltaic effect and photodetection performance. It
W = EVAC  EF (2)
has been reported that MoS2 and PbI2 also form a type-II
where EVAC is the energy level of a stationary electron in the heterostructure, which plays a momentous role in optoelectronic
vacuum, and EF is the Fermi level of the material. The work applications.44
functions of the Sb and InSe monolayers are calculated to be In order to investigate the band edge charge transport
4.69 eV and 5.68 eV, respectively, which are basically consistent properties of the heterostructure, the effective electron (hole)
with the reported values.42,43 The energy levels of EVAC and EF masses of CB (VB) charge carriers for values are calculated (see
have been shown in the calculated electrostatic potentials in the ESI†), which can estimate the ability of carrier mobility
Fig. S5 (ESI†). Such a difference in work functions between Sb indirectly. Before exploring the effective mass in heterostructures,
and InSe at the interface thus boosts the spontaneous flow of the effective masses of InSe and Sb monolayers were firstly
electrons from Sb towards InSe, as seen in Fig. 3(d). With the calculated to be mInSe
e = 0.12m0, mInSe
h = 1.1m0 and mSb e = 0.21m0,

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mSb
h = 0.18m0 (m0 is the free-electron mass), which nearly
coincide with other results.21,45,46 It is noteworthy that both
the electron and hole mobility can be enhanced effectively in the
Sb/InSe heterostructure with me = 0.11m0 and mh = 0.16m0,
respectively. The most significant change is the pronounced
decrease in the electron (hole) effective mass of the heterostructure
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compared with that of monolayer Sb (InSe). Correspondingly, the


electron (hole) mobility of the heterostructure is much greater than
that of monolayer Sb (InSe), which indicates that there is no close
relationship between the two mobilities. This is because the
electron (hole) mobility is determined mainly by the contribution
from the InSe (Sb) layer since the photogenerated electrons
(holes) almost reside in this layer, which also explains why the
electron (hole) mobility of Sb (InSe) is irrelevant to that of the Fig. 5 The evolution of the band gap as a function of the Eext in the Sb/InSe
heterostructure of type H3. The inset shows the direction of positive Eext.
heterostructure.

3.3 Electronic structure modified by the external electric field


It is crucial to modify the electronic properties of 2D materials layer and the downward quasi-Fermi level (EF-Sb) for the Sb layer.
for application in FETs, so that an external electric field (Eext) The divergence between EF-Sb and EF-InSe promotes the transfer of
perpendicular to the Sb/InSe heterostructure is employed. The electrons from the InSe layer to the Sb layer. Then the band gap
direction of Eext from the InSe to the Sb layer is taken as the reduces sharply with the Eext becoming stronger along the negative
positive direction and the Eext ranging from 0.6 to 0.6 V Å1 is direction and finally turns to be zero at about 0.53 V Å1.
applied. Fig. 4 illustrates how the electronic properties of the In contrast, application of a positive Eext makes the EF-InSe decrease
Sb/InSe heterostructure are influenced without and with a and the EF-Sb increase by shifting respective energy bands near
negative or positive Eext. Surprisingly, the heterostructure maintains the Fermi level, leading to a descending trend of the band gap
the type-II band alignment of direct band gaps at Eext from 0.52 to in the heterostructure. In particular, the bandgap diminishes
0.48 V Å1. Evolution of the band gap as a function of applied Eext is dramatically from 0.52 eV and finally is closed in the range of
presented in Fig. 5. It is found that the band gap of the Sb/InSe 0.4 to 0.49 V Å1, suggesting the transition from a semi-
heterostructure is sensitive to the Eext strength, eventually achieving conductor to metal. However, the charge drift induced in the
an intriguing semiconductor–metal transition at critical fields. The case of a positive Eext can facilitate the transfer of electrons
band gap varies linearly with Eext indicating a giant Stark effect. from the Sb layer to InSe layer, and the hole transfer from the
When the system is subjected to a negative Eext, the band InSe layer to Sb layer, as seen in Fig. 4(f). Therefore, different
gap firstly increases up to 0.4 V Å1, reaching up to the largest responses with a variable Eext revealed that the Sb/InSe hetero-
value of 0.87 eV, and the corresponding band structure and structure can be developed into a promising candidate for high-
band alignment are displayed in Fig. 4(a) and (d), respectively. performance sensors, FETs and MEMS devices.
The smooth enhancement of the band gap in the heterostructure To shed more light on the nature of the charge transfer
is attributed to the upward quasi-Fermi level (EF-InSe) for the InSe between the Sb and InSe layers, the averaged charge density

Fig. 4 (a–c) Projected band structures and (d–f) band alignments of the Sb/InSe heterostructure under an applied external field of 0.4, 0 and 0.4 V Å1,
respectively. EF-InSe (EF-Sb) is the quasi-Fermi level of InSe(Sb) in the Sb/InSe heterostructure.

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Fig. 6 (a) Averaged difference charge density of the Sb/InSe heterostructure along the vertical direction with various Eext. The inset represents the 3D
isosurface of the charge density difference for the pristine heterostructure at equilibrium distance. (b and c) The 3D charge density difference for the
heterostructure at 0.4 V Å1 and 0.4 V Å1, respectively. The blue and green regions represent electron accumulation and depletion, respectively, and
all isosurfaces of this text are set to 0.0035 e Å3. (A colour version of this figure can be viewed online.)

difference of the Sb/InSe heterostructure along the z direction stanene/ZnO heterostructures as well.47,48 These results show
has been calculated using the following formula: that the Eext can modulate the charge distribution and the carrier
ð ð concentration.
Dr ¼ rT ðx; y; zÞdxdy  rSb ðx; y; zÞdxdy
ð
 rInSe ðx; y; zÞdxdy (3)
4. Conclusions
In summary, the structural and electronic properties of an
where rT(x, y, z), rSb(x, y, z), and rInSe(x, y, z) are the charge Sb/InSe vdW heterostructure are investigated by first-principles
densities of the Sb/InSe heterostructure, Sb monolayer and InSe calculations. We demonstrate the stability of the researched
nanosheet at the (x, y, z) point, respectively. Accordingly, system by calculating the binding energies and comparing them
positive values indicate charge accumulation at the position, with those of the typical vdW crystals. In the Sb/InSe vdW
and negative values represent the charge depletion. The averaged heterostructure, the band structures of InSe and Sb layers are
difference charge density of the Sb/InSe heterostructure at different not destroyed due to the small lattice mismatch and weak vdW
Eext strengths is portrayed in Fig. 6(a), and the electron redis- interactions. The typical type-II band alignment indicates that the
tribution upon the formation of the interface in the pristine heterostructure can facilitate the effective separation of photo-
heterostructure is visually revealed in the inset. It is evident generated electron and hole pairs. It is found that the carrier
that the Sb layer donates electrons to the InSe layer, which mobility, especially the hole mobility, is enhanced in the hetero-
leads to p-doping in Sb and n-doping in InSe, in accordance structure. By applying Eext to the Sb/InSe heterostructure, the
with the charge transfer induced by the difference of work band gap can be tuned effectively while the band alignment
functions. The Mulliken population analysis reveals that the remains unchanged. Overall, the effective charge separation and
transferred electron is 0.21 e in the pristine heterostructure. relatively high carrier mobility make the Sb/InSe heterostructure
Obviously, compared with the case of Eext = 0, the number a promising material in the application of photodetectors and
of transferred electrons increases with the enhanced strength of electronics.
the applied Eext regardless of its direction, as evidenced typically
by the isosurfaces of charge density difference for Sb/InSe Conflicts of interest
heterostructure under Eext = 0.4 V Å1 and Eext = 0.4 V Å1,
shown in Fig. 6(b) and (c), respectively. It is interesting to point There are no conflicts to declare.
out that negative Eext induces more prominent charge transfer
than the positive Eext. What makes a difference is that the Acknowledgements
positive charges tend to transfer from the Sb layer to the InSe
layer and negative charges transfer from the InSe layer to the Sb This work was supported by the National Natural Science
layer in the case of a reverse Eext and forward Eext leading to the Foundation of China (51501017, 61604016 and 51802025), the China
opposite direction of electron and hole transfers. What’s more, Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (2016M590913 and
when it is subjected to a stronger Eext, the heterostructure 2017T100719), the International Science and Technology Coopera-
becomes a metal as a result of dielectric breakdown and tion Project of Shaanxi (2017KW-031), the Shaanxi Postdoctoral
charge tunneling, which can be found in arsenene/C3N and Science Foundation Funded Project (2016BSHEDZZ204), and the

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