Two-Dimensional Fluorine Distribution in a Heavily Distorted Perovskite Nickel Oxyfluoride Revealed by First-Principles Calculation

Abstract

Most perovskite oxyfluorides synthesized to date have cubic structures, wherein fluorine atoms tend to reside at every oxygen site randomly. In this theoretical study, we show a two-dimensional fluorine arrangement in a perovskite nickel oxyfluoride (NdNiO2F) with a large orthorhombic distortion. The site selectivity in the perovskite lattice is due to the orthorhombicity, which stabilizes the two-dimensional cis configurations with shorter Ni–O and longer Ni–F bonds to minimize the electrostatic energy. The electronic structure of NdNiO2F is characterized by its large octahedral rotation and the higher electronegativity of fluorine than oxygen. We also observed how the anion arrangement was affected by the biaxial strain by modeling epitaxial strained thin film on substrate and found that the 2D cis structure remains the most stable. However, the orientation of the two-dimensional structure containing F depends on the magnitude of the biaxial strain. Our findings suggest that fluorine doping in orthorhom...