Highly anisotropic Dirac fermions in square graphynes

Recently, there have been intense search of new 2D materials, and one especially appealing class of 2D materials is the all-carbon allotropes of Dirac materials. Here, we predict a new family of 2D carbon allotropes, square graphynes (S-graphynes) that exhibit highly anisotropic Dirac Fermions, using first-principle calculations within density functional theory. The equal-energy contour of their 3D band structure shows a crescent shape, and the Dirac crescent has varying Fermi velocities from 0.6 x 10$^{\mathrm{5}}$ to 7.2 x 10$^{\mathrm{5}}$ m/s along different k directions. Near the Fermi level, the Dirac crescent can be nicely expressed by an extended 2D Dirac model Hamiltonian. Furthermore, tight-binding band fitting reveals that the Dirac crescent originates from the next-nearest-neighbor interactions between C atoms. Our findings enrich the Dirac physics founded in other 2D Dirac systems, and offer a new design mechanism for creating Dirac band by tuning the interaction range. We envision that the highly anisotropic Dirac crescent may be exploited in all-carbon-based electronic devices for manipulating anisotropic electron propagation.