Mechanical, elastic, anisotropy, and electronic properties of monoclinic phase of m-SixGe3−xN4**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61601468), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant No. 3122014C024), and the Fund for Scholars of Civil Aviation University of China (Grant No. 2013QD06X).

Abstract

The structural, mechanical, elastic anisotropic, and electronic properties of the monoclinic phase of m-Si3N4, m-Si2GeN4, m-SiGe2N4, and m-Ge3N4 are systematically investigated in this work. The calculated results of lattice parameters, elastic constants and elastic moduli of m-Si3N4 and m-Ge3N4 are in good agreement with previous theoretical results. Using the Voigt–Reuss–Hill method, elastic properties such as bulk modulus B and shear modulus G are investigated. The calculated ratio of B/G and Poisson’s ratio v show that only m-SiGe2N4 should belong to a ductile material in nature. In addition, m-SiGe2N4 possesses the largest anisotropic shear modulus, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and percentage of elastic anisotropies for bulk modulus and shear modulus , and universal anisotropic index among m-SixGe3−xN4 (x = 0, 1, 2, 3.) The results of electronic band gap reveal that m-Si3N4, m-Si2GeN4, m-SiGe2N4, and m-Ge3N4 are all direct and wide band gap semiconducting materials.