Comparative ab initio calculations of SrTiO3/BaTiO3 and SrZrO3/PbZrO3 (0Â 0Â 1) heterostructures

Using a B3PW hybrid exchange-correlation functional within the density functional theory (DFT) we calculated from the first principles the electronic structure of BaTiO3/SrTiO3 and PbZrO3/SrZrO3 (0 0 1) interfaces. The optical band gap of both BaTiO3/SrTiO3 and PbZrO3/SrZrO3 (0 0 1) interfaces depends mostly from BaO or TiO2 and SrO or ZrO2 termination of the upper layer, respectively. Based on the results of our calculations we predict increase of the Ti-O and Zr-O chemical bond covalency near the SrTiO3/BaTiO3 and SrZrO3/PbZrO3 (0 0 1) interfaces as compared to the BaTiO3 and PbZrO3 bulk.