Ground state of bilayer hα-silica: mechanical and electronic properties

The family of two-dimensional (2D) crystals was recently joined by silica, one of the most abundant resources on earth. So far two different polymorphs of this material, namely a tetrahedra-shaped monolayer and a fully saturated bilayer structure, have been synthesized on various metal substrates and their fascinating properties enable 2D silica to hold promise in nanoelectronic device applications. In this paper a new ground state of bilayer-AAr-stacking hα-silica-has been discovered by first principles calculations. The new structure is featured with a formation of Si-Si bonds between all sp(3) hybridized SiO3 triangular pyramids, lying respectively in different silica layers, with an intrinsic rotational angle of about 12.5° along the out-of-plane Si-Si bond. Due to the doubled number of Si-Si bonds in the new structure, the system energy is lowered by nearly three times more than that reported recently in literature (0.8 eV) (Özçelik et al 2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 246803), when compared with the single layer hα-silica. A mechanical property investigation shows that the AAr-stacking bilayer hα-silica possesses high in-plane stiffness and a negative Poisson's ratio, which stems from the intrinsic rotational angle of the SiO3 triangular pyramids. Strikingly, the negative Poisson's ratio evolves into positive at a critical tensile strain ϵ ≈ 1.2%. Such negative-to-positive evolvement is associated with the adaptation of the rotational angle to the applied strain and the structure transition into the nearby valley of the energy landscape. The detailed transition process has been thoroughly analyzed. The electronic properties of the new ground state are also calculated, along with their response to the external strain. Our new ground state structure introduces a new member to the family of 2D bilayer silica materials and is expected to facilitate experimental studies identifying the related structures and exploring further physical and chemical properties of nanoscale systems.