Electronic and optical properties of bilayer PbI2: a first-principles study

By employing first-principles methods, we investigate the effects of stacking patterns and interlayer coupling on the electronic structures and optical properties of bilayer (BL) PbI2. For optical properties, excitonic effects are considered. The results show that crystal-type BL PbI2 stacking pattern is the most stable bilayer structures with the equilibrium interlayer distance of 3.27 A and a direct band structure. Moreover, for all considered patterns, the interlayer coupling can induce the band structures to transform from indirect to direct and also the band gap values to vary from 2.56 eV to 2.62 eV. In addition, our calculations show that the exciton binding energy of the most stable pattern is 0.81 eV, and excitonic effects have obvious influences on optical responses of BL PbI2. These results may be useful to future experimental studies on optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional BL PbI2 nanosheets.