Date of Award

5-2016

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Nanoscale Science

Advisor/Committee Chair

Bradley Thiel

Abstract

Workflows for computationally simulating transition metal dichalcogenides using density functional theoretic methods and cluster expansion were established, as implemented in the Quantum ESPRESSO and Alloy Theoretic Automated Toolkit computer codes, respectively. Effects of energy cutoff values and k-point density on convergence of DFT results were investigated for the MoS2 structure, and theoretic band structure calculations for MoS2 and WS2 were performed. The MoXW(1-X)S2 alloy system was also investigated using the maps code in the Alloy Theoretic Automated Toolkit in order to generate a composition vs energy plot. The application of Special Quasi-random Structures to further research into TMDC alloy systems and their order-disorder transformations is discussed.

Share

COinS