We report on the discovery of a 2-dimensional copper-bismuth nano sheet from \textit{ab initio} calculations, which we call cubine. According to our predictions, single layers of cubine can be isolated from the recently reported high-pressure CuBi bulk material (metastable at ambient conditions) at an energetic cost of merely ≈20~meV/\AA2, comparable to separating single layers of graphene from graphite. Our calculations suggest that cubine has remarkable electronic and electrochemical properties: It is a superconductor with a moderate electron-phonon coupling λ=0.5, leading to a Tc of ≈1~K, and can be readily intercalated with lithium with a high diffusibility, rendering it a promising candidate material as an anode in lithium-ion batteries.
@article{arxiv.1704.03038,
title = {Cubine, a superconducting 2-dimensional copper-bismuth nano sheet},
author = {Maximilian Amsler and Zhenpeng Yao and Chris Wolverton},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.03038},
year = {2017}
}