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Growth, structure, and properties of selected two-dimensional materials from density functional theory investigations

Abdulslam, Abdulfattah Ab.
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2018
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After an initial decade of excitement brought by the successful isolation of graphene and discovery of its exotic properties, the attention of the scientific community turned to other 2-D materials that could provide diversity in terms of useful properties without relying on increasingly complex engineering of graphene-based 2-D layers or nanostructures. In this arena, a range of materials have been either experimentally synthesized or theoretically hypothesized, the most important currently being hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), molybdenum disulphide, silicene, phosphorene, and maxenes --among others. Some of the key issues of current importance in 2-D research are synthesis of specific 2-D materials, effects of the substrates on the morphology and properties of 2-D layers, and control of the properties through synthesizing different 2-D polymorphs: this thesis addresses particular problems falling under these three distinct themes. Specifically, parts of the thesis focus on phosphorene and hBN growth, morphology of hBN on palladium, and range of mechanical and electronic properties obtained from different 2-D silica polymorphs. For the phosphorene growth, the thesis advances the idea that the phosphorene can in fact grow by chemical vapor deposition on metals, provided that they are covered with hBN or graphene so as to prevent the formation of metal phosphides. For the multilayer hBN growth, results in this thesis support a recently proposed notion that adsorption of one precursor activates the adsorption and dehydrogenation of ammonia (the second precursor), which leads to the formation of second hBN layer and beyond when the metal substrate is already passivated by the firt hBN layer. Another chapter of this thesis shows a phenomenological model and density functional theory calculations explaining experimentally-observed novel morphologies of hBN on palladium. Lastly, this thesis shows examples of how polymorphs of 2-D silica can lead to diverse electronic properties ranging from insulating to metallic.
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