Magnetism and electronic phase transitions in monoclinic transition metal dichalcogenides with transition metal atoms embedded

Abstract

First-principles calculations have been performed to study the energetic, electronic, and magnetic properties of substitutional 3d transition metal dopants in monoclinic transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as topological insulators (1T′-MX2 with M = (Mo, W) and X = (S, Se)). We find various favorite features in these doped systems to introduce magnetism and other desirable electronic properties: (i) The Mn embedded monoclinic TMDs are magnetic, and the doped 1T′-MoS2 still maintains the semiconducting character with high concentration of Mn, while an electronic phase transition occurs in other Mn doped monoclinic TMDs with an increasing concentration of Mn. Two Mn dopants prefer the ferromagnetic coupling except for substitution of the nearest Mo atoms in 1T′-MoS2, and the strength of exchange interaction shows anisotropic behavior with dopants along one Mo zigzag chain having much stronger coupling. (ii) The substitutional V is a promising hole dopant, which causes little change to the energy dispersion around the conduction and valence band edges in most systems. In contrast, parts of the conduction band drop for the electron dopants Co and Ni due to the large structural distortion. Moreover, closing band gaps of the host materials are observed with increasing carrier concentration. (iii) Single Fe dopant has a magnetic moment, but it also dopes electrons. When two Fe dopants have a small distance, the systems turn into nonmagnetic semiconductors. (iv) The formation energies of all dopants are much lower than those in hexagonal TMDs and are all negative in certain growth conditions, suggesting possible realization of the predicted magnetism, electronic phase transitions as well as carrier doping in 1T′-MX2 based topological devices.