Communication: Nickel hydroxide as an exceptional deviation from the quantum size effect

Abstract

The quantum size effect is a well-known fundamental scientific phenomenon. Due to quantum confinement, downscaling a system to small sizes should increase the bandgap of a solid state material. However, in this work, we present an exception: monolayers of nickel hydroxide have smaller bandgaps than their bulk analogues, due to the surface states appearing at energies within the bandgap region. Our findings are obtained by several state-of-the-art first principles calculations.