A new kind of two-dimensional (2D) material with unique properties has been discovered by researchers with The University of Texas at Austin, bringing next-generation flexible electronic devices one step closer.
In materials science, size matters. And currently 2D materials are the hottest ticket. Thanks to their atomically thin size, light weight, high stretchability, impressive biocompatibility and the high performance rate of those with unique properties, 2D materials such as graphene have proved useful in a variety of ways including for technologies such as wearable human health care monitoring systems.
Researchers at UT Austin’s Center for Computational Materials and the Oden Institute for Computational Science and Engineering used supercomputers to discover the 2D materials that show ferroelectric, piezoelectric properties. These atomically thin materials are ferroelectric on account of their capacity for switchable, spontaneous electric polarization, and piezoelectric because that electric current is the result of applying pressure and heat.
The group of crystal structures, known as arsenic chalcogenides, are two dimensional. The super-thin structure makes them ideal for use in the miniaturization of next-generation flexible electronic devices.
“The advantage of 2D ferroelectric materials is that they can be made atomically thin, meaning they are measured at the sub-nanometer scale,” said Weiwei Gao, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Computational Materials and co-author of the study. Working alongside the center's director, James R. Chelikowsky, a professor in the Cockrell School's McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering and the College of Natural Sciences' Department of Physics, the Oden Institute researchers revealed their findings in a paper published in a recent edition of the journal Nano Letters.
