Effect of C-face 4H-SiC(0001) deposition on thermopower of single and multilayer graphene in AA, AB and ABC stacking

The Seebeck coefficient in multilayer graphene is investigated within the density-functional theory, using the semiclassical Boltzmann equations and interpolating the bands in a maximally-localized Wannier functions basis set. We compare various graphene stackings (AA, AB and ABC) both free-standing and deposited on a $4H$-SiC(0001) C-terminated substrate. We find that the presence of the SiC substrate can significantly affect the thermopower properties of graphene layers, depending on the stacking, providing a promising way to tailor efficient graphene-based devices.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

AiiDA: Automated Interactive Infrastructure and Database for Computational Science

Computational science has seen in the last decades a spectacular rise in the scope, breadth, and depth of its efforts. Notwithstanding this prevalence and impact, it is often still performed using the renaissance model of individual artisans gathered in a workshop, under the guidance of an established practitioner. Great benefits could follow instead from adopting concepts and tools coming from computer science to manage, preserve, and share these computational efforts. We illustrate here our paradigm sustaining such vision, based around the four pillars of Automation, Data, Environment, and Sharing. We then discuss its implementation in the open-source AiiDA platform (http://www.aiida.net), that has been tuned first to the demands of computational materials science. AiiDA's design is based on directed acyclic graphs to track the provenance of data and calculations, and ensure preservation and searchability. Remote computational resources are managed transparently, and automation is coupled with data storage to ensure reproducibility. Last, complex sequences of calculations can be encoded into scientific workflows. We believe that AiiDA's design and its sharing capabilities will encourage the creation of social ecosystems to disseminate codes, data, and scientific workflows.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figure

BoltzWann: A code for the evaluation of thermoelectric and electronic transport properties with a maximally-localized Wannier functions basis

We present a new code to evaluate thermoelectric and electronic transport properties of extended systems with a maximally-localized Wannier function basis set. The semiclassical Boltzmann transport equations for the homogeneous infinite system are solved in the constant relaxation-time approximation and band energies and band derivatives are obtained via Wannier interpolations. Thanks to the exponential localization of the Wannier functions obtained, very high accuracy in the Brillouin zone integrals can be achieved with very moderate computational costs. Moreover, the analytical expression for the band derivatives in the Wannier basis resolves any issues that may occur when evaluating derivatives near band crossings. The code is tested on binary and ternary skutterudites CoSb_3 and CoGe_{3/2}S_{3/2}.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

A posteriori metadata from automated provenance tracking: Integration of AiiDA and TCOD

In order to make results of computational scientific research findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable, it is necessary to decorate them with standardised metadata. However, there are a number of technical and practical challenges that make this process difficult to achieve in practice. Here the implementation of a protocol is presented to tag crystal structures with their computed properties, without the need of human intervention to curate the data. This protocol leverages the capabilities of AiiDA, an open-source platform to manage and automate scientific computational workflows, and TCOD, an open-access database storing computed materials properties using a well-defined and exhaustive ontology. Based on these, the complete procedure to deposit computed data in the TCOD database is automated. All relevant metadata are extracted from the full provenance information that AiiDA tracks and stores automatically while managing the calculations. Such a protocol also enables reproducibility of scientific data in the field of computational materials science. As a proof of concept, the AiiDA-TCOD interface is used to deposit 170 theoretical structures together with their computed properties and their full provenance graphs, consisting in over 4600 AiiDA nodes

Automated mixing of maximally localized Wannier functions into target manifolds

Maximally localized Wannier functions (MLWFs) are widely used to construct first-principles tight-binding models that accurately reproduce the electronic structure of materials. Recently, robust and automated approaches to generate these MLWFs have emerged, leading to natural sets of atomic-like orbitals that describe both the occupied states and the lowest-lying unoccupied ones (when the latter can be meaningfully described by bonding/anti-bonding combinations of localized orbitals). For many applications, it is important to instead have MLWFs that describe only certain target manifolds separated in energy between them -- the occupied states, the empty states, or certain groups of bands. Here, we start from the full set of MLWFs describing simultaneously all the target manifolds, and then mix them using a combination of parallel transport and maximal localization to construct orthogonal sets of MLWFs that fully and only span the desired target submanifolds. The algorithm is simple and robust, and it is applied to some paradigmatic but non-trivial cases (the valence and conduction bands of silicon, the top valence band of MoS$_2$, the $3d$ and $t_{2g}$/$e_g$ bands of SrVO$_3$) and to a mid-throughput study of 77 insulators.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Engineering polar discontinuities in honeycomb lattices

Unprecedented and fascinating phenomena have been recently observed at oxide interfaces between centrosymmetric cubic materials, such as LaAlO$_3$ and SrTiO$_3$, where a polar discontinuity across the boundary gives rise to polarization charges and electric fields that drive a metal-insulator transition, with the appearance of free carriers at the interface. Two-dimensional analogues of these systems are possible, and honeycomb lattices could offer a fertile playground, thanks to their versatility and the extensive on-going experimental efforts in graphene and related materials. Here we suggest different realistic pathways to engineer polar discontinuities across interfaces between honeycomb lattices, and support these suggestions with extensive first-principles calculations. Two broad approaches are discussed, that are based on (i) nanoribbons, where a polar discontinuity against the vacuum emerges, and (ii) selective functionalizations, where covalent ligands are used to engineer polar discontinuities by selective or total functionalization of the parent system. All the cases considered have the potential to deliver innovative applications in ultra-thin and flexible solar-energy devices and in micro- and nano-electronics.Comment: 12+epsilon pages, 6 figure

Projectability disentanglement for accurate and automated electronic-structure Hamiltonians

Maximally-localized Wannier functions (MLWFs) are a powerful and broadly used tool to characterize the electronic structure of materials, from chemical bonding to dielectric response to topological properties. Most generally, one can construct MLWFs that describe isolated band manifolds, e.g. for the valence bands of insulators, or entangled band manifolds, e.g. in metals or describing both the valence and the conduction manifolds in insulators. Obtaining MLWFs that describe a target manifold accurately and with the most compact representation often requires chemical intuition and trial and error, a challenging step even for experienced researchers and a roadblock for automated high-throughput calculations. Here, we present a very natural and powerful approach that provides automatically MLWFs spanning the occupied bands and their natural complement for the empty states, resulting in Wannier Hamiltonian models that provide a tight-binding picture of optimized atomic orbitals in crystals. Key to the success of the algorithm is the introduction of a projectability measure for each Bloch state onto atomic orbitals (here, chosen from the pseudopotential projectors) that determines if that state should be kept identically, discarded, or mixed into a disentangling algorithm. We showcase the accuracy of our method by comparing a reference test set of 200 materials against the selected-columns-of-the-density-matrix algorithm, and its reliability by constructing Wannier Hamiltonians for 21737 materials from the Materials Cloud

The digitalization of sustainability reporting processes: A conceptual framework

Building on the contingency theory, the paper aims to shed light on the contribution provided by technological innovation on sustainability reporting quality. A fuzzy expert system (FES) was developed to evaluate the cumulative effects related to the adoption of digital devices in sustainability reporting practices. The analysis underlined the enabling role covered by Sustainable Enterprise Resources Planning (S-ERP) systems on sustainability reporting processes. In detail, we found that the disclosure of environmental information using technological platforms can lead analysts to a more accurate evaluation