Band offsets in heterojunctions between cubic perovskite oxides

Abstract

The band offsets for nine heterojunctions between titanates, zirconates, and niobates with the cubic perovskite structure were calculated from first principles. The effect of strain in contacting oxides on their energy structure, many-body corrections to the position of the band edges (calculated in the GW approximation), and the splitting of the conduction band resulting from spin-orbit interaction were consistently taken into account. It was shown that the neglect of the many-body effects can lead to errors in determination of the band offsets up to 0.36 eV. The failure of the transitivity rule, which is often used to determine the band offsets in heterojunctions, was demonstrated and its cause was explained.