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Project leader Lazic Predrag
Project co-leader: Dr. Igor Zutic
Administering organization: Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb Bijenicka Cesta 54, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia Web: www.irb.hr OIB: 69715301002 Contact Person: Dr. Tome Antičić, Director, e-mail: Tome.Anticic@irb.hr, phone: +385 1 4561006.
Partner Institution/Company: SUNY at Buffalo
Grant type: 1B
Project title: Van der waals heterostructures: fundamentals and applications
Project summary: The discovery of graphene has initiated a new approach for building heterostructures from atomically thin crystals, which are "glued" together by weak van der Waals (vdW) forces. The dispersive nature of these forces overcomes the lattice match constraints of conventional heterostructures, thereby providing a path to realizing a myriad of vdW heterostructures with atomically-sharp interfaces and unexplored paths for materials innovation. While such heterostructures present exciting opportunities for new physical phenomena and device concepts, arising from the uniquely tunable physical properties of two-dimensional vdW materials, their systematic understanding is still missing. To date, ab initio studies of vdW heterostructures are limited to only a handful of material combinations. To address this challenge, we propose to build a database of vdW heterostructures with materials properties calculated for over 2000 combinations, including transition-metal dichalcogenides, graphene, hexagonal boron-nitride, and transition-metal oxides. The vdW heterostructure database will provide an open-source access to their relaxed structure, energy band structure, as well as their optical and magnetic properties. The database will be iteratively refined by inputs from experimental characterization and analytical modeling of vdW heterostructures and, when needed, more sophisticated ab initio calculations. Desirable materials properties in selected vdW heterostructures will be attained through engineering the electronic structure, electric gating, and proximity effects based on the obtained database. Realistic ab initio transport calculations will provide a direct link to experimentally test selected vdW heterostructures in actual device geometries. While our focus will be on spintronic applications, we expect a much broader significance of our findings. This project will build an extensive and freely available online database for these nascent materials. To enhance materials discovery beyond the scope of this proposal, we will develop an open-source code for generation of relaxed vdW heterostructures. We expect that our proposed work will enable that already internationally recognized Croatian research of graphene is extended to explore many other vdW materials and related applications emerging from their heterostructures.
Hrvatski sažetak: Otkrice grafena je potaknulo novi pristup u izgradnji heterostruktura od atomski tankih slojeva. Slojevi se drze u strukturi pomocu slabih van der Waalsovskih (vdW) sila. Zbog svog disperzivnog karaktera ove sile omogucavaju slaganje heterostruktura bez uobicajenog zahtjeva za bliskim vrijednostima kristalnih konstanti resetke te time otvaraju put realizaciji velikog broja heterostrukura s atomski ostrim granicama medju slojevima. Iako takve strukture otvaraju uzbudljive mogucnosti za nove fizikalne fenomene i uredjaje njihovo sistematsko razumijevanje trenutno ne postoji. Trenutno su ab-initio racuni takvih vdW heterostruktura ograniceni na svega par primjera. Za rjesavanje ovog izazova predlazemo stvaranje baze podataka iz ab initio racuna za vdW heterostrukture od dva sloja koje bi obuhvacale preko 2000 kombinacija ukljucujuci dihalkogenide prelaznih metala, grafen, bor-nitrid i okside prelaznih metala. Baza bi bila dostupna po open source principu i sadrzavala bi relaksiranu geometriju, elektronsku strukture (vrpce) te opticka svojstva vdW heterostruktura. Podaci u bazi ce se dalje profiniti u suradnji s eksperimentalnim grupama te analitickim modeliranjem te kada je potrebno i ab initio racunima vece slozenosti. Zeljena svojstva materijala u odabranim vdW heterostrukturama ce se na osnovu podataka iz baze moci dalje modificirati efektima gatinga, proximity efektom i slicno. Realisticne ab initio racune transporta omogucit ce direktnu usporedbu sa eksperimentalnim mjerenjima na pravim uredjajima izgradjenim od odabranih vdW materijala. Iako je nas fokus primarno na primjenama u spintronici, ocekujemo da ce nasi rezultati imati puno sire znacenje. U sklopu projekta izgradit ce se velika i slobodno dostupna on line baza podataka za ove materijale u nastanku. Za poboljsavanje pronalaska novih materijala izvan okvira ovog projektnog prijedloga razvit cemo racunalni kod za generiranje relaksiranih vdW heterostruktura. Ocekujemo da ce nas predlozeni rad omoguciti da se vec prepoznatljiva zajednica hrvatskih istrazivaca u podrucju grafena prosiri u istrazivan je mnogih drugih vdW materijala te na vezane primjene koje proizlaze iz njihovih heterostruktura.
Amount requested from UKF: 1,098.824,00
Amount of matching funding: 552.804,00
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