Morbec, JM and Galli, G (2016) Charge transport properties of bulk Ta3N5 from first principles. Physical Review B, 93 (3). ISSN 2469-9950

[thumbnail of 2016-Giulia-PRB.pdf]
Preview
Text
2016-Giulia-PRB.pdf - Published Version

Download (380kB) | Preview

Abstract

Tantalum nitride is considered a promising material for photoelectrochemical water splitting, however, its charge transport properties remain poorly understood. We investigated polaronic and band transport in Ta3N5
using first-principles calculations. We first studied the formation of small polarons using density-functional theory (DFT) including DFT + U and hybrid functionals. We found that electron small polarons may occur but hole polarons are not energetically favorable. The estimated polaronic mobility for electrons is at least three orders of magnitude smaller than that measured in Ta3N5 films, suggesting that the main transport mechanism for both electrons and holes is bandlike. Since band transport is strongly affected by the carrier effective masses, and Ta3N5 is known to have large electron and hole effective masses, we also investigated whether substitutional impurities or strain may help lower the effective masses. We found a significant reduction in both electron and hole effective masses (up to 17% for electrons and 39% for holes) under applied strain, which may lead to a substantial improvement (up to 30% for electrons and 15% for holes) in the carrier mobilities.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © American Physical Society. This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via American Physical Society at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.035201 - please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
Subjects: Q Science > QC Physics
Q Science > QD Chemistry
Divisions: Faculty of Natural Sciences > School of Chemical and Physical Sciences
Depositing User: Symplectic
Date Deposited: 18 Nov 2019 12:06
Last Modified: 18 Nov 2019 12:14
URI: https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/7233

Actions (login required)

View Item
View Item