July 26, 2023• Physics 16, s104

Researchers have demonstrated a approach to sift a database of crystalline compounds for buildings that may be separated into helpful one-dimensional supplies.

Amid the likelihood area of crystalline compounds are ones that may be readily became one-dimensional (1D) supplies with fascinating properties. A workforce on the College of Florida, Gainesville, has now offered explorers of that area with a map of kinds. Joshua Paul and his colleagues have demonstrated a approach to sift the Supplies Challenge database—an open-access encyclopedia of greater than 100,000 compounds—for crystals that ought to readily separate into steady 1D nanowires [1]. Among the many crystals pinpointed by the workforce are compounds that would yield nanowires with purposes in spintronics and quantum applied sciences.

The researchers used their beforehand developed algorithm to establish which atoms in a crystal’s unit cell are chemically bonded on the premise of whether or not the atoms’ radii overlap with each other. Subsequent, they seemed for bonded atoms in linear clusters which are separated from the unit cell alongside two axes. Such clusters are held solely by the van der Waals pressure and may subsequently be exfoliated from the majority. It turned out that 551 crystal buildings had these traits. Paul and colleagues narrowed the pattern additional utilizing density-functional principle to pick solely these nanowires more likely to stay intact after exfoliation moderately than decomposing right into a extra steady, much less helpful state.

From the 103 crystals that made it by these filters, Paul and colleagues selected 5 nanowires with totally different magnetic moments per unit cell and evaluated their stability beneath totally different magnetic configurations. In addition they chosen a further three nanowires for a examine of structural distortions that happen after exfoliation. Such distortions can drastically alter the properties of the nanowire. “It will be sorely disappointing if the metallic nanowire one was trying to make turned out to be insulating,” says Paul.

–Marric Stephens

Marric Stephens is a Corresponding Editor for Physics Journal primarily based in Bristol, UK.

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