Stability and Electronic Properties of Palladium Dichalcogenide Polytypes as Nanomaterials

We present a detailed computational investigation of the stability and electronic properties of three different polytypes of the palladium dichalcogenides PdX2. These are intriguing for electronic and optical applications as nanomaterials, including logical junctions because of a potential metal-semiconductor transition in the 1T polytype when going from bulk to monolayers.[1,2]
Both PdS2 and PdSe2 crystallize in a layered pyrite-type structure or 2O (see Fig. 1) as bulk materials.[3] Only for high pressures, they adopt the cubic pyrite-type structure.[4] Recently, monolayers of PdSe2 have been exfoliated and shown to maintain their pentagonal structure found in the bulk material.[5] In contrast to PdS2 and PdSe2, bulk PdTe2 occurs naturally in 1T.[6]
We evaluate the differences in chemical bonding between the possible polytypes by density functional theory and show that it requires a hybrid approach in order to properly account for the electron correlation effects in these systems. From there, we estimate their electronic properties and stabilities as nanomaterials.