Electronic and optical responses of quasi-one-dimensional phosphorene nanoribbons to strain and electric field

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 6089 - 13
• Main Authors: Zhang, Longlong, Hao, Yuying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 17.04.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 639/766/119/1000/1018; 639/766/119/995; Electric fields; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-24521-w

Electronic and optical responses of zigzag- and armchair-edge quasi-one-dimensional phosphorene nanoribbons (Q1D-PNRs) to strain and external field are comparatively studied based on the tight-binding calculations. The results show that: (i) Zigzag-edge Q1D-PNR has the metallic ground state; applying global strains can not open the gap at the Fermi level but applying the electric field can achieve it; the direct/indirect character of the field-induced gap is determined by the electron-hole symmetry; an electric-field-enhanced optical absorption of low-energy photons is also predicted. (ii) Armchair-edge Q1D-PNR turns out an insulator with the large direct band gap; the inter-plane strain modulates this gap non monotonically while the in-plane one modulates it monotonically; in addition, the gap responses to electric fields also show strong direction dependence, i. e., increasing the inter-plane electric field will monotonically enlarge the gap but the electric field along the width direction modulates the gap non monotonically with three characteristic response regions.