Two-dimensional metals offer intriguing possibilities to explore metallicity and other related properties in systems with reduced dimensionality. Here, following recent experimental reports of synthesis of two-dimensional metallic gallium (gallenene) on insulating substrates, we conduct a computational search of gallenene structures using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, and identify stable low energy structures. Our calculations of the critical temperature for conventional superconductivity yield values ∼7 K for gallenene. We also emulate the presence of the substrate by introducing the external confining potential and test its effect on the structures with unstable phonons.
@article{arxiv.2107.04182,
title = {Stability and electronic properties of two-dimensional gallium},
author = {Alex Kutana and Qiyuan Ruan and Jun-Jie Zhang and Evgeni S. Penev and Boris I. Yakobson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.04182},
year = {2021}
}