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Pressure‐Tuneable Visible‐Range Band Gap in the Ionic Spinel Tin Nitride
Author(s) -
Kearney John S. C.,
Graužinytė Miglė,
Smith Dean,
Sneed Daniel,
Childs Christian,
Hinton Jasmine,
Park Changyong,
Smith Jesse S.,
Kim Eunja,
Fitch Samuel D. S.,
Hector Andrew L.,
Pickard Chris J.,
FloresLivas José A.,
Salamat Ashkan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201805038
Subject(s) - band gap , materials science , tin , metastability , nitride , ionic bonding , spinel , ambient pressure , chemical physics , wide bandgap semiconductor , density functional theory , optoelectronics , ion , nanotechnology , computational chemistry , chemistry , thermodynamics , metallurgy , physics , organic chemistry , layer (electronics)
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 Sn 3 N 4 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.