Exfoliation and Cleavage of Crystals from a Universal Potential

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Barnowsky, Tom, Timm, Carsten, Friedrich, Rico
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Barnowsky, Tom
Timm, Carsten
Friedrich, Rico
author_facet Barnowsky, Tom
Timm, Carsten
Friedrich, Rico
contents Exfoliation and cleavage create two-dimensional (2D) materials and surfaces with physical and chemical properties distinct from their bulk parents. The rising class of non-van der Waals (non-vdW) 2D materials derived from non-layered crystals provides a fascinating new platform - greatly expanding the landscape of low-dimensional materials. Current computational models, however, provide limited guidance: existing descriptors are largely tailored to vdW layered systems. Here, we introduce a general framework predicting crystal cleavage and exfoliable 2D subunits directly from bulk structures. At its core is a universal eXfoliation and Cleavage Potential (XCP) enabling large-scale screening of diverse materials at negligible computational cost. Applying this approach, we obtain 37,208 cleavable surfaces and candidate non-vdW 2D materials from which we investigate 2,377 likely exfoliable ones using high-throughput density functional theory. We identify sheets with square and rectangular lattices, semiconducting systems exhibiting an indirect-to-direct band-gap transition upon exfoliation, and first non-vdW 2D metals. Our study thus opens a systematic route to explore and design new 2D materials with unprecedented chemical and structural diversity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16721
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exfoliation and Cleavage of Crystals from a Universal Potential
Barnowsky, Tom
Timm, Carsten
Friedrich, Rico
Materials Science
Exfoliation and cleavage create two-dimensional (2D) materials and surfaces with physical and chemical properties distinct from their bulk parents. The rising class of non-van der Waals (non-vdW) 2D materials derived from non-layered crystals provides a fascinating new platform - greatly expanding the landscape of low-dimensional materials. Current computational models, however, provide limited guidance: existing descriptors are largely tailored to vdW layered systems. Here, we introduce a general framework predicting crystal cleavage and exfoliable 2D subunits directly from bulk structures. At its core is a universal eXfoliation and Cleavage Potential (XCP) enabling large-scale screening of diverse materials at negligible computational cost. Applying this approach, we obtain 37,208 cleavable surfaces and candidate non-vdW 2D materials from which we investigate 2,377 likely exfoliable ones using high-throughput density functional theory. We identify sheets with square and rectangular lattices, semiconducting systems exhibiting an indirect-to-direct band-gap transition upon exfoliation, and first non-vdW 2D metals. Our study thus opens a systematic route to explore and design new 2D materials with unprecedented chemical and structural diversity.
title Exfoliation and Cleavage of Crystals from a Universal Potential
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16721