Borophenes to Borophites: Exploration Through Electron Counting

What is it about?

Graphite was available to peel off graphene. Borophenes, equivalent of graphene, cannot be peeled off from borophites as the latter do not exist. The article provides the rules to explain the requirements 2D-borophenes, their bilayers and multilayers, and how from each of these a different set of borophites can in principle be obtained. The number of hexagonal holes in an otherwise triangulene 2D structure and the number of interlayer 2center-2electron bonds in the multilayer borophenes help to get an electronic structure similar to that of graphene and eventually to borophites.

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Why is it important?

Borophenes are computed to exhibit even better properties from a 2D material point of view. While experimental studies on monolayer and bilayer borophenes on metal surfaces are known, and large number of computational studies are available, the current study gives an electron counting strategy that takes borophenes and multilayer borophenes to borophites. This provides an understanding beyond computational results.

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