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Strain-driven onset of nontrivial topological insulating states in Zintl Sr<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow /><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:mi>X</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>compounds (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>X</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mtext>Pb</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math>, Sn)
We explore the topological behavior of the binary Zintl phase of the alkaline earth metals based compounds Sr$_2$Pb and Sr$_2$Sn using both standard and hybrid density functional theory. It is found that Sr$_2$Pb lies on the verge of a topological instability which can be suitably tuned through the application of …