Field-induced spin-polarized electronic and optical properties of armchair stanene nanoribbons

Electronic and optical properties of armchair stanene nanoribbons are studied within the $s{p}^3$ tight-binding model including spin-orbit coupling in the presence of in-plane electric field. Electric field strongly modulates energy dispersions leading to a zero-gap transition, shift in edge-states, and exhibition of spin-splitting states. Then, the complex dielectric functions in the long wavelength limit is calculated from the gradient approximation. More field-induced transition channels exhibit richer optical spectra which further reveal spin-polarized feature at low frequency. Prominent plasmons in loss spectra come from π–σ mixing orbital. The plasmon peak frequency and height are tuned by field strength. Also, the threshold plasmon frequency linearly decreases as electric field increases and it vanishes at critical field. The reflectance exhibits oscillatory behaviors and shows dip structures with sharp plasmon edge, undergoing a red-shift with increasing field. The calculated results fully show that field-modulations of electronic and optical properties strongly depend on nanoribbon's geometry.     

从理论模型到探究应用：二维材料锡烯的发展史

2011年,中科院物理研究所的姚裕贵教授从理论上对二维锡进行了研究,首次预测了二维锡是一种拓扑绝缘体。至2013年,二维锡的理论研究已较为成熟,美国斯坦福大学的张首晟教授基于锡的拉丁文stannum和二维烯材料2D-Xene后缀组合正式提出了锡烯(Stanene)的概念。2015年,上海交通大学的贾金锋教授等人利用分子束外延技术在Bi₂Te₃(111)衬底上首次成功地生长出了二维锡烯。随后,锡烯在不同衬底上相继生成,其制备方法取得了一定的进展。人们也在制备探究中逐渐发现,锡烯具有优异的物化性质,在众多领域内有良好的应用前景。锡烯的发展史重新诠释了二维材料的发展机制,为新型二维材料的预测、制备与应用提供了新的视角和思路。     

First-principles investigation of armchair stanene nanoribbons

In this study, we systematically investigated the structural, electronic and optical properties of armchair stanene nanoribbons (ASNRs) by using the first-principles calculations. First, we performed full geometry optimization calculations on various finite width ASNRs where all the edge Sn atoms are saturated by hydrogen atoms. The buckled honeycomb structure of two dimensional (2D) stanene is preserved, however the bond length between the edge Sn atoms is shortened to 2.77 Å compared to the remaining bonds with 2.82 Å length. The electronic properties of these nanoribbons strongly depend on their ribbon width. In general, band gap opens and increases with decreasing nanoribbon width indicating the quantum confinement effect. Consequently, the band gap values vary from a few meV exhibiting low-gap semiconductor (quasi-metallic) behavior to ～0.4–0.5 eV showing moderate semiconductor character. Furthermore, the band gap values are categorized into three groups according to modulo 3 of integer ribbon width N which is the number of Sn atoms along the width. In order to investigate the optical properties, we calculated the complex dielectric function and absorption spectra of ASNRs, they are similar to the one of 2D stanene. For light polarized along ASNRs, in general, largest peaks appear around 0.5 eV and 4.0 eV in the imaginary part of dielectric functions, and there are several smaller peaks between them. These major peaks redshifts, slightly to the lower energies of incident light with increasing nanoribbon width. On the other hand, for light polarized perpendicular to the ribbon, there is a small peak around 1.6 eV, then, there is a band formed from several peaks from 5 eV to ～7.5 eV, and the second one from 8 eV to ～9.5 eV. Moreover, the peak positions hardly move with varying nanoribbon width, which indicates that quantum confinement effect is not playing an essential role on the optical properties of armchair stanene nanoribbons. In addition, our calculations of the optical properties indicate the anisotropy with respect to the type of light polarization. This anisotropy is due to the quasi-2D nature of the nanoribbons.     

石墨炔与锡烯层状体系的形变势和电声耦合及载流子传输理论研究

我们对sp + sp²杂化的碳同素异形体—石墨炔,以及锡烯等层状体系的电子结构、形变势、电声耦合和电荷输运性质进行了回顾。有些二维石墨炔具有类似石墨烯的狄拉克锥,同时石墨炔电子结构可通过将其沿不同方向裁剪成不同宽度一维纳米带来调节。采用玻尔兹曼输运方程和形变势近似,结合第一性原理计算,我们预测石墨炔电荷载流子室温迁移率可达10⁴–10⁵ cm²·V^-1·s^-1,尤其6, 6, 12-石墨炔,因有两个狄拉克锥及比石墨烯弱的电声耦合,其室温迁移率甚至能高于石墨烯。因此具有独特电子结构和高迁移率的石墨炔能成为继石墨烯之后未来的纳米电子器件材料。此外我们着重分析了形变势方法的适用性：密度泛函微扰理论和瓦尼尔插值技术能精确计算任意波矢和模式的声子对载流子散射,该方法在石墨烯和石墨炔上的运用表明二维平面碳材料中对载流子输运起主导作用的是长波长纵声学声子散射,因而形变势方法是适用的;但通过对锡烯等二维非平面buckling结构的材料声子散射和迁移率的计算,发现此类不具备σ_h对称性的材料有较强的面外声子散射和横声学声子谷间散射,使得常用的形变势失效。