Band Gap and Edge Engineering via Ferroic Distortion and Anisotropic Strain: The Case of SrTiO${}_3$

Abstract

The effects of ferroic distortion and biaxial strain on the band gap and band edges of SrTiO${}_3$ (STO) are calculated using density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory. Anisotropic strains are shown to reduce the gap by breaking degeneracies at the band edges. Ferroic distortions are shown to widen the gap by allowing new band edge orbital mixings. Compressive biaxial strains raise band edge energies, while tensile strains lower them. To reduce the STO gap, one must lower the symmetry from cubic while suppressing ferroic distortions. Our calculations indicate that for engineered orientation of the growth direction along [111], the STO gap can be controllably and considerably reduced at room temperature.

5 pages, 5 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (5)

• Efficient implementation of the GW approximation within the all-electron FLAPW method
• Quasiparticle and Optical Properties of Rutile and Anatase TiO${}_2$
• Maximally-localized Wannier functions for GW quasiparticles
• Systematic {\em ab initio} study of the phase diagram of epitaxially strained SrTiO${}_3$
• ab initio Study of Strain-Induced Ferroelectricity in SrTiO3

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