First principles study of structural and electronic properties of BNNTs

In this article the electronic and structural properties of single-walled boron nitride (BN) nanotubes with a diameter range of 4–22 Å have been investigated using the generalized gradient approximation with both Perdew, Burke and Ernzerhof (PBE) and Becke–Lee–Yang–Parr (BLYP) functionals based on density functional theory. The variation of radial distribution, bond length, lattice constant, density of states, buckling separation, total energies and the electronic band gap of BN nanotubes have been studied in terms of the diameter of the nanotube. Our results revealed a correlation between the buckling and band gap: the higher the buckling, the lower the band gap, and by decreasing the tube diameter, the buckling separation increases. It is revealed that for both armchair and zigzag boron nitride nanotubes (BNNT) the value of the band gap increases by increasing the nanotube diameter. Moreover, it is concluded that for small BN nanotubes by reducing the radius, the band gap of the armchair nanotube remains almost constant, while the band gap of the zigzag nanotubes has a rapidly decreasing trend. The value of band gap obtained by the BLYP hybrid functional is more accurate than the PBE functional. The PDOS calculations revealed that the VBM comes from the N 2p orbitals, while the CBM is ruled by the B 2p orbitals. According to the obtained results, BNNTs are suggested as good materials for applications in the nanoscale optoelectronic devices.