Electronic and Optical Properties of Ultrawide Bandgap Perovskite Semiconductors via First Principles Calculations

TL;DR

This study uses first principles calculations to identify two novel ultrawide bandgap perovskite semiconductors with strong UV optical absorption, but potential hole trapping issues may hinder p-type doping.

Contribution

It introduces two new UWBG perovskite materials with predicted bandgaps above 4.5 eV, expanding the family of ultrawide bandgap semiconductors.

Findings

Predicted bandgaps above 4.5 eV for the new materials

Strong ultraviolet optical absorption observed

Holes tend to trap near oxygen atoms, affecting conductivity

Abstract

Recent research in ultrawide-bandgap (UWBG) semiconductors has focused on traditional materials such as Ga2O3, AlGaN, AlN, cubic BN, and diamond; however some materials exhibiting single perovskite structure have been known to yield bandgaps above 3.4 eV, such as BaZrO3. In this work we propose two novel materials to be added to the family of UWBG semiconductors: Ba2CaTeO6 exhibiting a double perovskite structure and Ba2K2Te2O9 with a triple perovskite structure. Using first principles hybrid functional calculations we predict the bandgaps of all the studied systems to be above 4.5 eV with strong optical absorption in the ultraviolet region. Furthermore, we show that holes have a tendency to get trapped through lattice distortions in the vicinity of oxygen atoms with average trapping energy of 0.25 eV,potentially preventing the enhancement of p-type conductivity through traditional chemical doping.