The study of a structural and electronic properties of two-dimensional flat layer arsenene using planewaves density functional calculation

We explore the structural and electronic properties of a single layer arsenene using the state of art, first principle approach from density functional theory (DFT). All the calculation was conducted using an open source DFT code, adopted the planewaves (PWs) method by Quantum Espresso (QE). The calculation utilized an exchange correlation potential of electron parametrized by Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) under generalized gradient approximation (GGA) functional scheme. Meanwhile, the pseudopotential assigned for the core electron is the projector typed augmented wave with the core potential correction, generated using "atomic" code. All those parameters resulted an optimized structure of the honeycomb arsenene with lattice constant of 4.4971 Ǻ. The arsenene layer occupy a bond length value of 2.5964 Ǻ as measured between its neighbouring bonded atoms. From an optimized structure, we explore its electronic bandstructure plotted from 3 highly symmetries point for 2-dimensional (2D) material known as ‘Γ’, ‘Χ’ and ‘Κ’ with 3 electron pathways. The total number of bands considered in bandstruture plotting is 10, where 5 bands will be considered as valance bands while another 5 is conduction bands. The bandstructure shows that a single layer flat arsenene exhibits the characteristics of a conductor due to the overlapping of band near to Fermi level. Dirac cone were also noticed near to the Fermi energy level of the bandstructure. Lastly, we study the total electron density for the whole structure to reveal its bonding characteristics. The contour plot of electron densities between two bounded atoms displayed a pure covalent bond characteristic. The findings of this work is expected to contribute to the key of the electronic devices development, optoelectronics, and sensor devices based on 2D material technology. © 2020 Trans Tech Publications Ltd, Switzerland.