Effect of Hydrostatic Pressure on the Structural, Electronic and Optical Properties of SnS2 with a Cubic Structure: The DFT Approach

Abstract

Recently, a cubic structure of polymorphic SnS2 has been synthesized experimentally, which is stable at room temperature. In this paper, we calculated some structural, electronic and optical properties of the cubic SnS2 structure based on the full potential-linearized augmented plane waves method. We also studied the effect of hydrostatic pressure on the physical properties of the cubic SnS2 structure. Structural results show that the compressibility of the cubic SnS2 phase is greater than its trigonal phase and the compressibility decreases with increasing pressure. Investigations of the electronic properties indicate that pressure changes the density of states and the energy band gap increases with increasing pressure. The variation of energy band gap versus pressure is almost linear. We concluded that cubic SnS2 is a semiconductor with an indirect energy band gap, like its trigonal phase. The optical calculations revealed that the dielectric constant decreases with increasing pressure, and the width of the forbidden energy interval increases for electromagnetic wave propagation. Moreover, plasmonic energy and refractive index are changed with increasing pressure.