Thickness-dependent piezoelecticity of black arsenic from few-layer to monolayer

Ultra-thin forms of black phosphorus (b-P) have been widely investigated due to its unique properties arising from the in-plane anisotropy in its crystal structure. Recently, two-dimensional (2D) forms of black arsenic (b-As) have also been added to the 2D family. In this study, the thickness-dependent structural, electronic, and piezoelectric properties of layered b-As are investigated by means of ab-initio calculations. The structural optimizations confirm the van der Waals type layered structure for both these structures. In addition, increasing the thickness is shown to result in the decreasing of the band gap arising from the confinement of electrons in the layers. In contrast to the case of b-P, it is revealed that a transition from indirect-to-direct band gap behavior can be found in b-As which can be important for optically identifying the single-layer structure. Moreover, the piezoelectric properties are investigated as a function of the number of layers. It is shown that while a single-layer of b-As does not exhibit piezoelectric features, even in the case of bilayer structures the piezoelectricity is created. Our results revealed the strong in-plane anisotropy in piezoelectric coefficients for the three-layer and thicker structures. We have shown that the out-of-plane piezoelectric properties can be achieved by non-centrosymmetric features in the out-of-plane direction in thicker structures of b-As.