Electron counting and a large family of two-dimensional semiconductors

Comparing with the conventional semiconductors, the choice of the two dimensional semiconductor (2DSC) materials is very limited. Based on proper electron counting, we propose a large family of 2DSCs, all adopting the same structure and consisting of only main group elements. Using advanced density functional calculations, we demonstrate the attainability of these materials, and show that they cover a large range of lattice constants, band gaps and band edge states, therefore are good candidate materials for heterojunctions. This family of two dimensional materials may pave a way toward fabrication of 2DSC devices at the same thriving level as 3D semiconductors.