Collective octahedral tilting in ultrathin Ruddlesden–Popper perovskite under terahertz light

Abstract

Perovskites have been applied in a wide range of fields such as solar cells and nonvolatile memories due to their multiferroic nature and excellent photo-electric conversion capabilities. Recently, two-dimensional perovskites with a few atomic layers have been successfully synthesized, attracting significant attention for potential applications. In this work, we perform first-principles calculations to investigate an ultrathin prototypical Ruddlesden−Popper phase, Bi2FeO4, with its thickness down to one unit cell. We show that this compound could exist in two (meta-)stable octahedral tilting phases, belonging to P21/c and C2/m space groups, respectively. Using the optomechanical theory, we suggest that reversible and nonvolatile phase switching can be triggered using nondestructive terahertz light. In addition, the two phases show distinct optical reflectance spectrum in the visible light range, which can be used as an optical probe for phase transformation. This enables both “write” and “read” in an all-optical route.