Novel cage-like nanoporous ZnO polymorphs with cubic lattice frameworks

Two cage-like nanoporous polymorphs composed of spheroidal cages (ZnO)24 as building block in high symmetrical cubic lattice frameworks are proposed. By using this cluster, instead of atom, as primary building block we studied various scheme of its assembling via bottom up cluster-cluster coalescence schemes. First principles and density-functional tight binding (DFTB+) calculations confirm that the new polymorphs are energetically, dynamically, and mechanically stable. The two newly found nanoporous phases possess an intrinsic wide direct band gap preserving from wurtzite tetragonal-based bonding. The high cubic symmetry wide bandgap semiconductor and its derivatives are expected to have broad applications in photocatalysis, and biomedicine.