Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.054602
Kamal Choudhary, F. Tavazza
Materials with van der Waals-bonding are known to exhibit quantum confinement effect, in which the electronic bandgap of the three-dimensional (3D) realization of a material is lower than that of its two-dimensional (2D) counterpart. However, the possibility of an anomalous quantum confinement effect (AQCE) exists, where the bandgap trend is reversed. In this work, we computationally identify materials for which such AQCE occurs. Using density functional theory (DFT), we compute ~1000 OptB88vdW (semi-local functional), ~50 HSE06 and ~50 PBE0 (hybrid functional) bandgaps for bulk and their corresponding monolayers in the JARVIS-DFT database. OptB88vdW identifies 65 AQCE materials, but the hybrid functionals only confirm such finding in 14 cases. Some of the AQCE systems identified through HSE06 and PBE0 are: hydroxides or oxide hydroxide compounds (AlOH2, Mg(OH)2, Mg2H2O3, Ni(OH)2, SrH2O3) as well as Sb-halogen-chalcogenide compounds (SbSBr, SbSeI) and alkali-chalcogenides (RbLiS and RbLiSe). A detailed electronic structure analysis, based on band-structure and projected density of states, shows AQCE is often characterized by lowering of the conduction band in the monolayer and corresponding changes in the pz electronic orbital contribution, with z being the non-periodic direction in the 2D case. We believe our computational results would spur the effort to validate the results experimentally and will have impact on bandgap engineering applications based on low-dimensional materials.
{"title":"Predicting anomalous quantum confinement effect in van der Waals materials","authors":"Kamal Choudhary, F. Tavazza","doi":"10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.054602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.054602","url":null,"abstract":"Materials with van der Waals-bonding are known to exhibit quantum confinement effect, in which the electronic bandgap of the three-dimensional (3D) realization of a material is lower than that of its two-dimensional (2D) counterpart. However, the possibility of an anomalous quantum confinement effect (AQCE) exists, where the bandgap trend is reversed. In this work, we computationally identify materials for which such AQCE occurs. Using density functional theory (DFT), we compute ~1000 OptB88vdW (semi-local functional), ~50 HSE06 and ~50 PBE0 (hybrid functional) bandgaps for bulk and their corresponding monolayers in the JARVIS-DFT database. OptB88vdW identifies 65 AQCE materials, but the hybrid functionals only confirm such finding in 14 cases. Some of the AQCE systems identified through HSE06 and PBE0 are: hydroxides or oxide hydroxide compounds (AlOH2, Mg(OH)2, Mg2H2O3, Ni(OH)2, SrH2O3) as well as Sb-halogen-chalcogenide compounds (SbSBr, SbSeI) and alkali-chalcogenides (RbLiS and RbLiSe). A detailed electronic structure analysis, based on band-structure and projected density of states, shows AQCE is often characterized by lowering of the conduction band in the monolayer and corresponding changes in the pz electronic orbital contribution, with z being the non-periodic direction in the 2D case. We believe our computational results would spur the effort to validate the results experimentally and will have impact on bandgap engineering applications based on low-dimensional materials.","PeriodicalId":8467,"journal":{"name":"arXiv: Materials Science","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88342292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.102.180103
Churen Gui, S. Dong
Nitride perovskites are supposed to exhibit excellent properties as oxide analogues and may even have better performance in specific fields for their more covalent characters. However, till now, very limited nitride perovskites have been reported. In this work, a nitride perovskite LaMoN$_3$ has been systematically studied by first-principles calculations. The most interesting physical property is its ferroelectric $R3c$ phase, which can be stabilized under a moderate hydrostatic pressure ($sim1.5$ GPa) and probably remain meta-stable under the ambient condition. Its ferroelectric polarization is considerable large, $80.3$ $mu$C/cm$^2$, driven by the nominal $4d^0$ rule of Mo$^{6+}$, and the covalent hybridization between Mo's $4d$ and N's $2p$ orbitals is very strong. Our calculation not only predicts a new ferroelectric material with prominent properties, but also encourages more studies on pressure engineering of functional nitrides.
{"title":"Pressure-induced ferroelectric phase of \u0000LaMoN3","authors":"Churen Gui, S. Dong","doi":"10.1103/PhysRevB.102.180103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.180103","url":null,"abstract":"Nitride perovskites are supposed to exhibit excellent properties as oxide analogues and may even have better performance in specific fields for their more covalent characters. However, till now, very limited nitride perovskites have been reported. In this work, a nitride perovskite LaMoN$_3$ has been systematically studied by first-principles calculations. The most interesting physical property is its ferroelectric $R3c$ phase, which can be stabilized under a moderate hydrostatic pressure ($sim1.5$ GPa) and probably remain meta-stable under the ambient condition. Its ferroelectric polarization is considerable large, $80.3$ $mu$C/cm$^2$, driven by the nominal $4d^0$ rule of Mo$^{6+}$, and the covalent hybridization between Mo's $4d$ and N's $2p$ orbitals is very strong. Our calculation not only predicts a new ferroelectric material with prominent properties, but also encourages more studies on pressure engineering of functional nitrides.","PeriodicalId":8467,"journal":{"name":"arXiv: Materials Science","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87103876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}