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First principle investigations of the structural, electronic, and phase stability in 2D layered ZnSb

Recently, the two dimensional (2D) materials have become a potential candidates for various technological applications in spintronics and optoelectronics. In the present study, the structural, electronic, and phase stability of 2D layered ZnSb compounds of four different phases viz. wurzite(w), tetragonal (t), hexagonal (h), and orthorhombic (o) have been tuned using the first principle calculations based on density functional theory (DFT). We invoked the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional and the projected augmented wave (PAW) method during all the calculations. Based on our numerical results, we predicted the novel tetragonal phase as stable phase of ZnSb next to existing orthorhombic structure. We reported the pressure induced phase transition between orthorhombic to tetragonal phase at 12.48 GPa/atom. The projected density of states indicates the strong p-d hybridization between Sb-5p and Zn-3d states confirming the nature of strong covalent bonding between them. The electronic band structures suggest that t-ZnSb, w-ZnSb, and h-ZnSb are metallic in nature whereas o-ZnSb is semiconducting with narrow band gap of 0.03 eV using PBE. We predicted the possibility of extracting the two dimensional (2D) monolayer sheet in t-ZnSb and o-ZnSb according to the exfoliation energy criterion. In addition, the 2D monolayer (ML) of o-ZnSb has been predicted to be dynamically stable but that of t-ZnSb is not stable as manifested in phonon dispersion bands. Surprisingly, the semiconducting band gap nature of o-ZnSb changes from indirect and narrow to direct and sizable while going from 3D bulk to 2D ML structure. Further, we estimated the value of work functions for the surfaces of t-ZnSb and o-ZnSb as 4.61 eV and 4.04 eV respectively. Such materials can find the niche applications in next generation electronic devices utilizing 2D hetero-structures.