First-principles study of structural, electronic, and optical properties of ZnSnO3

The structural, electronic, and optical properties of ZnSnO3 were investigated using density functional theory within the generalized gradient approximation. The structure parameters obtained agree well with the experimental results. The electronic structures indicate that ZnSnO3 is a semiconductor with a direct band gap of 1.0 eV. The calculated optical spectra can be assigned to contributions of the interband transitions from valence band O 2p levels to conduction band Sn 5s levels or higher conduction band Zn 3d levels in the low-energy region, and from O 2p to Sn 5p or Zn 4p conduction band in the high-energy region.