A first-principles investigation of various gas (CO, H2O, NO, and O2) absorptions on a WS2 monolayer: stability and electronic properties

Using first-principles calculations, we investigate the interactions between a WS2 monolayer and several gas molecules (CO, H2O, NO, and O2). Different sets of calculations are performed based on generalized-gradient approximations (GGAs) and GGA + U ( eV) calculations with D2 dispersion corrections. In general, GGA and GGA + U establish good consistency with each other in terms of absorption stability and band gap estimations. Van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) calculations are also performed to validate long-range gas molecule-WS2 monolayer interactions, and the resultant absorption energies of four gas-absorption cases (from 0.21 to 0.25 eV) are significantly larger than those obtained from calculations using empirical D2 corrections (from 0.11 to 0.19 eV). The reported absorption energies clearly indicate van der Waals interactions between the WS2 monolayer and gas molecules. The NO and O2 absorptions are shown to narrow the band gaps of the WS2 material to 0.75-0.95 eV and produce small magnetic moments (0.71 μB and 1.62 μB, respectively). Moreover, these two gas molecules also possess good charge transferability to WS2. This observation is important for NO- and O2-sensing applications on the WS2 surface. Interestingly, WS2 can also activate the dissociation of O2 with an estimated barrier of 2.23 eV.