Effects of structural degeneracies on properties of two-dimensional materials

Over the past two years, my group has been involved on the prediction and subsequent verification of two-dimensional structural phase transitions in two-dimensional materials beyond graphene that arise due to structural degeneracies on unit cells with reduced symmetries. The realization of these structural transitions is important in the context of a theory for two-dimensional materials that is overwhelmingly developed for structures at zero temperature, and in this presentation I will provide a short account of these developments, and opportunities for further work.

References:
M. Mehboudi, et al., Nano Lett. 16, 1704 (2016)
M. Mehboudi, et al., PRL 117, 246802 (2016)
G. G. Naumis, et al., Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 096501 (2017)
Tuning the ferro- to para-electric transition temperature and dipole orientation of group-IV monochalcogenide monolayers. S. Barraza-Lopez, et al., arXiv:1709.04581 (2017)