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

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 Sn₃ N₄ 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

SUBMITTER: Kearney JSC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6221123 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature