Pressure‐Tuneable Visible‐Range Band Gap in the Ionic Spinel Tin Nitride

Authors

John S. C. Kearney, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Miglė Graužinytė, Universität Basel
Dean Smith, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Daniel Sneed, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Christian Childs, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Jasmine Hinton, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Changyong Park, Carnegie Institute of WashingtonFollow
Jesse S. Smith, Carnegie Institute of WashingtonFollow
Eunja Kim, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Samuel D. S. Fitch, University of Southampton
Andrew L. Hector, University of Southampton
Chris J. Pickard, University of Cambridge; Tohoku UniversityFollow
José A, Flores-Livas, Universität BaselFollow
Ashkan Salamat, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-18-2018

Publication Title

Angewandte Chemie International Edition

Volume

57

Issue

36

First page number:

11623

Last page number:

11628

Abstract

The application of pressure allows systematic tuning of the charge density of a material cleanly, that is, without changes to the chemical composition via dopants, and exploratory high‐pressure experiments can inform the design of bulk syntheses of materials that benefit from their properties under compression. The electronic and structural response of semiconducting tin nitride Sn3N4 under compression is now reported. A continuous opening of the optical band gap was observed from 1.3 eV to 3.0 eV over a range of 100 GPa, a 540 nm blue‐shift spanning the entire visible spectrum. The pressure‐mediated band gap opening is general to this material across numerous high‐density polymorphs, implicating the predominant ionic bonding in the material as the cause. The rate of decompression to ambient conditions permits access to recoverable metastable states with varying band gaps energies, opening the possibility of pressure‐tuneable electronic properties for future applications.

Keywords

Ab initio calculations; High-pressure chemistry; Nitrides; Semiconductors

Disciplines

Chemistry

Language

English

Repository Citation

Kearney, J. S., Graužinytė, M., Smith, D., Sneed, D., Childs, C., Hinton, J., Park, C., Smith, J. S., Kim, E., Fitch, S. D., Hector, A. L., Pickard, C. J., Flores-Livas, J. A., Salamat, A. (2018). Pressure‐Tuneable Visible‐Range Band Gap in the Ionic Spinel Tin Nitride. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 57(36), 11623-11628.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201805038