TY - JOUR
T1 - Electronic properties of the Sn1−xPbxO alloy and band alignment of the SnO/PbO system:
T2 - a DFT study
AU - Kelaidis, Nikolaos
AU - Bousiadi, Sofia
AU - Zervos, Matthew
AU - Chroneos, Alexander
AU - Lathiotakis, Nektarios
N1 - Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
PY - 2020/10/8
Y1 - 2020/10/8
N2 - Tin monoxide (SnO) has attracted attention due to its p-type character and capability of ambipolar conductivity when properly doped, properties that are beneficial for the realization of complementary oxide thin film transistors technology, transparent flexible circuits and optoelectronic applications in general. However, its small fundamental band gap (0.7 eV) limits its applications as a solar energy material, therefore tuning its electronic properties is necessary for optimal performance. In this work, we use density functional theory (DFT) calculations to examine the electronic properties of the Sn1−xPbxO ternary oxide system. Alloying with Pb by element substitution increases the band gap of SnO without inducing defect states in the band gap retaining the anti-bonding character of the valence band maximum which is beneficial for p-type conductivity. We also examine the properties of the SnO/PbO heterojunction system in terms of band alignment and the effect of the most common intrinsic defects. A broken gap band alignment for the SnO/PbO heterojunction is calculated, which can be attractive for energy conversion in solar cells, photocatalysis and hydrogen generation.
AB - Tin monoxide (SnO) has attracted attention due to its p-type character and capability of ambipolar conductivity when properly doped, properties that are beneficial for the realization of complementary oxide thin film transistors technology, transparent flexible circuits and optoelectronic applications in general. However, its small fundamental band gap (0.7 eV) limits its applications as a solar energy material, therefore tuning its electronic properties is necessary for optimal performance. In this work, we use density functional theory (DFT) calculations to examine the electronic properties of the Sn1−xPbxO ternary oxide system. Alloying with Pb by element substitution increases the band gap of SnO without inducing defect states in the band gap retaining the anti-bonding character of the valence band maximum which is beneficial for p-type conductivity. We also examine the properties of the SnO/PbO heterojunction system in terms of band alignment and the effect of the most common intrinsic defects. A broken gap band alignment for the SnO/PbO heterojunction is calculated, which can be attractive for energy conversion in solar cells, photocatalysis and hydrogen generation.
KW - Electronic structure calculations
KW - SnO / PbO
KW - DFT
KW - electronic properties
UR - https://rdcu.be/b8obp
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85092300881&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-020-73703-y
DO - 10.1038/s41598-020-73703-y
M3 - Article
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 10
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
IS - 1
M1 - 16828
ER -