Ab initio study of adsorption and diffusion of lithium on transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

Using first principles calculations, we studied the stability and electronic properties of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers of the type MX₂ (M = Ti, Zr, Hf, V, Nb, Ta, Mo, Cr, W; X= S, Se, Te). The adsorption and diffusion of lithium on the stable MX₂ phase was also investigated for potential application as an anode for lithium ion batteries. Some of these compounds were found to be stable in the 2H phase and some are in the 1T or 1T' phase, but only a few of them were stable in both 2H/1T or 2H/1T' phases. The results show that lithium is energetically favourable for adsorption on MX₂ monolayers, which can be semiconductors with a narrow bandgap and metallic materials. Lithium cannot be adsorbed onto 2H-WS₂ and 2H-WSe₂, which have large bandgaps of 1.66 and 1.96 eV, respectively. The diffusion energy barrier is in the range between 0.17 and 0.64 eV for lithium on MX₂ monolayers, while for most of the materials it was found to be around 0.25 eV. Therefore, this work illustrated that most of the MX₂ monolayers explored in this work can be used as promising anode materials for lithium ion batteries.