Recently, Professor Ren Junfeng's team and Associate Professor Lu Sai's research group published a paper entitled "Effects of atomic vibrations on the electronic structure and the Electronic Structure" in the condensed matter physics journal Physical Review B photocatalytic efficiency of α-Fe2O3 ". Shandong Normal University is the sole signatory of the paper. Luo Hongxu, a postgraduate student in the research group, is the first author, and Associate Professor Lu Sai is the corresponding author.

The strong electroacoustic coupling in metal semiconductor oxides can significantly change their electronic structure and physical properties. In this paper, the effect of lattice vibration on the electronic structure of iron oxide is studied. Theoretical studies have shown that lattice vibration enhances the disorder of the structure, which leads to the localization of the electronic structure at the edge of the band gap and promotes the formation of hole polarons, thus limiting the carrier transport performance and photocatalytic water decomposition efficiency in iron oxide.

The above research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Youth Project and the Shandong Taishan Scholars Young Experts Project.

The thesis links: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.109.195203