Tailoring the electronic and optical properties of SnSe2/InS van der Waals heterostructures by the biaxial strains

The electronic and optical properties of SnSe2/InS van der Waals heterostructures have been examined under the impact of biaxial strain. In the pristine state, our findings demonstrate that the heterostructure is an indirect bandgap semiconductor of 0.726/1.74 eV using PBE/HSE06 methods. The bandgap has been shown to differ considerably with the effect of biaxial strain, approaching approximately 0.620 eV with a strain of -6%. Interestingly, the calculated bandgaps are distributed in the visible light region and extended through a wide variety of regions that may have broad nanodevices applications. Most notably, under the compression strain effect, a remarkable ameliorating in optical properties can be observed. In specific, the absorption at -6% reaches 18 x 10 4 cm(-1) and the dielectric real part peaks shifted to the visible light region. The strain effect on the SnSe2/InS heterostructure makes this heterostructure a greater potential to be used in nanoelectronics applications (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.