Large Bandgap Topological Insulator in Oxide APoO3 (A = Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, and Ra) Perovskite: An Ab Initio Study

Abstract

Under the density functional theory framework, we have calculated the electronic and elastic properties of APoO3 (A = Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba, and Ra) cubic perovskites. We found that CaPoO3, SrPoO3, BaPoO3, and RaPoO3 are topological insulators (TIs) with very large bandgaps of 0.861, 0.871, 0.820, and 0.810 eV, respectively. The nontrivial band topology together with the Z2 topological number of APoO3 perovskite are investigated. We also theoretically determine the three independent elastic constants C11, C12, and C44 of the APoO3 perovskite. The bulk modulus, shear modulus, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and anisotropy factor are also calculated from the obtained elastic constants. We found that the Debye temperature for the APoO3 perovskite is around 330-370 K. In the bulk APoO3 perovskite, if the center Po atom is shifted 0.09Å away from the center, the induced electric polarization is quite large, being around 0.02 C/m2. In the surface band calculation, we found that both AO and PoO2 surfaces give rise to contributions to the conduction channel. If the Po atom moves both in-plane and out-of-plane, we show that both electric polarization and topologically protect surface conduction states exist in APoO3 perovskite, indicating that these oxide APoO3 perovskites are ferroelectric TIs and might be useful for spintronic applications.