First-principles studies of chromium line-ordered alloys in a molybdenum disulfide monolayer

Density functional theory calculations have been performed to study the thermodynamic stability, structural and electronic properties of various chromium (Cr) line-ordered alloy configurations in a molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) hexagonal monolayer for band gap engineering. Only the molybdenum (Mo) sites were substituted at each concentration in this study. For comparison purposes, different Cr line-ordered alloy and random alloy configurations were studied and the most thermodynamically stable ones at each concentration were identified. The configurations formed by the nearest neighbor pair of Cr atoms are energetically most favorable. The line-ordered alloys are constantly lower in formation energy than the random alloys at each concentration. An increase in Cr concentration reduces the lattice constant of the MoS₂ system following the Vegard's law. From density of states analysis, we found that the MoS₂ band gap is tunable by both the Cr line-ordered alloys and random alloys with the same magnitudes. The reduction of the band gap is mainly due to the hybridization of the Cr 3d and Mo 4d orbitals at the vicinity of the band edges. The band gap engineering and magnitudes (1.65 eV to 0.86 eV) suggest that the Cr alloys in a MoS₂ monolayer are good candidates for nanotechnology devices.