Anisotropy of effective masses induced by strain in Janus MoSSe and WSSe monolayers

In this work, the influence of biaxial strain on electronic, optical, and effective masses characteristics of Janus MSSe (M = Mo, W) have been investigated through first-principles calculations as implemented in WIEN2k package. From the obtained results, we remark that MoSSe and WSSe monolayers exhibit, respectively, a direct and indirect bandgap transition at equilibrium. Our achieved results demonstrate that the biaxial strain fundamentally alters the electronic states of Janus MSSe monolayers, and mainly, a semiconductor-metal transition phase has been determined to occur at a biaxial strain ratio of 12%. Moreover, it has been revealed that both electrons and holes effective masses of MSSe monolayers can be tuned by biaxial strain. For the optical properties of Janus monolayers, the polarization direction of the incident light plays a vital role in defining the light absorption domain. The MSSe Janus monolayers are shown to have a wide range of absorption spectrum, including the visible light domain with perpendicular polarized light. Furthermore, our computations of the dielectric function indicate that the optical responses of Janus monolayers MoSSe and WSSe strongly depend on the applied strain ratio; particularly, for the high photon energy domain. Overall, the findings revealed that both Janus MoSSe and WSSe monolayers could be potential materials for applications in optoelectronics. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.