Strain Engineering on the Excitonic Properties of Monolayer GaSe

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to show how mechanical strain can significantly modify the electronic and optical properties of monolayer GaSe, enabling tailored optoelectronic device design.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of strain effects on GaSe's electronic structure and optical responses, highlighting the potential for strain engineering in 2D materials.

Findings

Band gap varies nonlinearly with strain

Tensile strain reduces exciton binding energy

Inhomogeneous strain induces polarization effects

Abstract

This paper investigates strain effects on the electronic and optical properties of monolayer GaSe using first-principles calculations. The deformation significantly alters energy dispersion, band gap, and the band edge states of GaSe. The band gap evolution exhibits both linearly and nonlinearly with the strains, and strongly depending on the types of deformation and the direction of the modifications. The external mechanical strains also significantly tailor the optical properties of GaSe, the exciton binding energy is strongly reduced when the tensile strain is applied, while the opposite way is true for compressive stress. Moreover, the inhomogeneous strain also induces strong polarization in the absorption spectra. Our calculations demonstrate that the electronic and optical properties of GaSe monolayer can be significantly tuned by using strain engineering which appears as a promising way to design novel optoelectronic devices.