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Inverse Perovskite Oxysilicides and Oxygermanides as Candidates for Nontoxic Infrared Semiconductor and Their
Naoki Ohashi1,2, David Mora-Fonz3, Shigeki Otani1
1National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan.
Abstract:
We have synthesized inverse-perovskite-type oxysilicides and oxygermanides represented by R3SiO and R3GeO (R = Ca and Sr) and studied their characteristics in the search for nontoxic narrow band gap semiconductors. These compounds exhibit a sharp absorption edge around 0.9 eV and a luminescence peak in the same energy range. These results indicate that the obtained materials have a direct-band electronic structure, which was confirmed by hybrid DFT calculations. These materials, made from earth abundant and nontoxic elements and with a relatively light electron/hole effective mass, represent strong candidates for nontoxic optoelectronic devices in the infrared range.
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