Strain tunable band structure of a new 2D carbon allotrope C-568

Abstract

Recently, C(568)has emerged as a new carbon allotrope, which shows semiconducting properties with a band gap around 1 eV and has attracted much attention. In this work, the external strain effects on the electronic properties of C(568)have been studied theoretically through first-principle calculations. The numerical results show that while in-plane uniaxial and biaxial strains both reduces the band gap of C(568)in case of tensile strain, their effects are quite different in the case of compressive strain. With increasing compressive uniaxial strain, the band gap of C(568)first increases, and then dramatically decreases. In contrast, the application of compressive biaxial strain up to -10% only leads to a slight increase of band gap. Moreover, an indirect-to-direct gap transition can be realized under both types of compressive strain. The results also show that the optical anisotropy of C(568)can be induced under uniaxial strain, while biaxial strain does not cause such an effect. These results indicate good strain tunability of the band structure of C-568, which could be helpful for the design and optimization of C-568-based nanodevices.