Browsing by Author "Puthirath, Anand B."

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    Friction of magnetene, a non–van der Waals 2D material
    (AAAS, 2021) Serles, Peter; Arif, Taib; Puthirath, Anand B.; Yadav, Shwetank; Wang, Guorui; Cui, Teng; Balan, Aravind Puthirath; Yadav, Thakur Prasad; Thibeorchews, Prasankumar; Chakingal, Nithya; Costin, Gelu; Singh, Chandra Veer; Ajayan, Pulickel M.; Filleter, Tobin
    Two-dimensional (2D) materials are known to have low-friction interfaces by reducing the energy dissipated by sliding contacts. While this is often attributed to van der Waals (vdW) bonding of 2D materials, nanoscale and quantum confinement effects can also act to modify the atomic interactions of a 2D material, producing unique interfacial properties. Here, we demonstrate the low-friction behavior of magnetene, a non-vdW 2D material obtained via the exfoliation of magnetite, showing statistically similar friction to benchmark vdW 2D materials. We find that this low friction is due to 2D confinement effects of minimized potential energy surface corrugation, lowered valence states reducing surface adsorbates, and forbidden low-damping phonon modes, all of which contribute to producing a low-friction 2D material.
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    High-K dielectric sulfur-selenium alloys
    (AAAS, 2019) Susarla, Sandhya; Tsafack, Thierry; Owuor, Peter Samora; Puthirath, Anand B.; Hachtel, Jordan A.; Babu, Ganguli; Apte, Amey; Jawdat, BenMaan I.; Hilario, Martin S.; Lerma, Albert; Calderon, Hector A.; Hernandez, Francisco C. Robles; Tam, David W.; Li, Tong; Lupini, Andrew R.; Idrobo, Juan Carlos; Lou, Jun; Wei, Bingqing; Dai, Pengcheng; Tiwary, Chandra Sekhar; Ajayan, Pulickel M.
    Upcoming advancements in flexible technology require mechanically compliant dielectric materials. Current dielectrics have either high dielectric constant, K (e.g., metal oxides) or good flexibility (e.g., polymers). Here, we achieve a golden mean of these properties and obtain a lightweight, viscoelastic, high-K dielectric material by combining two nonpolar, brittle constituents, namely, sulfur (S) and selenium (Se). This S-Se alloy retains polymer-like mechanical flexibility along with a dielectric strength (40 kV/mm) and a high dielectric constant (K = 74 at 1 MHz) similar to those of established metal oxides. Our theoretical model suggests that the principal reason is the strong dipole moment generated due to the unique structural orientation between S and Se atoms. The S-Se alloys can bridge the chasm between mechanically soft and high-K dielectric materials toward several flexible device applications.