906 research outputs found
Excitonic and Quasiparticle Life Time Effects on Silicon Electron Energy Loss Spectrum from First Principles
The quasiparticle decays due to electron-electron interaction in silicon are
studied by means of first-principles all-electron GW approximation. The
spectral function as well as the dominant relaxation mechanisms giving rise to
the finite life time of quasiparticles are analyzed. It is then shown that
these life times and quasiparticle energies can be used to compute the complex
dielectric function including many-body effects without resorting to empirical
broadening to mimic the decay of excited states. This method is applied for the
computation of the electron energy loss spectrum of silicon. The location and
line shape of the plasmon peak are discussed in detail.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR
Anisotropic thermal expansion of bismuth from first principles
Some anisotropy in both mechanical and thermodynamical properties of bismuth
is expected. A combination of density functional theory total energy
calculations and density functional perturbation theory in the local density
approximation is used to compute the elastic constants at 0 K using a finite
strain approach and the thermal expansion tensor in the quasiharmonic
approximation. The overall agreement with experiment is good. Furthermore, the
anisotropy in the thermal expansion is found to arise from the anisotropy in
both the directional compressibilities and the directional Gr\"uneisen
functions.Comment: accepted for publication in PR
Dispersion corrections in graphenic systems: a simple and effective model of binding
We combine high-level theoretical and \emph{ab initio} understanding of
graphite to develop a simple, parametrised force-field model of interlayer
binding in graphite, including the difficult non-pairwise-additive
coupled-fluctuation dispersion interactions. The model is given as a simple
additive correction to standard density functional theory (DFT) calculations,
of form where is the interlayer
distance. The functions are parametrised by matching contact properties, and
long-range dispersion to known values, and the model is found to accurately
match high-level \emph{ab initio} results for graphite across a wide range of
values. We employ the correction on the difficult bigraphene binding and
graphite exfoliation problems, as well as lithium intercalated graphite
LiC. We predict the binding energy of bigraphene to be 0.27 J/m^2, and the
exfoliation energy of graphite to be 0.31 J/m^2, respectively slightly less and
slightly more than the bulk layer binding energy 0.295 J/m^2/layer. Material
properties of LiC are found to be essentially unchanged compared to the
local density approximation. This is appropriate in view of the relative
unimportance of dispersion interactions for LiC layer binding
Simulation of hydrogenated graphene Field-Effect Transistors through a multiscale approach
In this work, we present a performance analysis of Field Effect Transistors
based on recently fabricated 100% hydrogenated graphene (the so-called
graphane) and theoretically predicted semi-hydrogenated graphene (i.e.
graphone). The approach is based on accurate calculations of the energy bands
by means of GW approximation, subsequently fitted with a three-nearest neighbor
(3NN) sp3 tight-binding Hamiltonian, and finally used to compute ballistic
transport in transistors based on functionalized graphene. Due to the large
energy gap, the proposed devices have many of the advantages provided by
one-dimensional graphene nanoribbon FETs, such as large Ion and Ion/Ioff
ratios, reduced band-to-band tunneling, without the corresponding disadvantages
in terms of prohibitive lithography and patterning requirements for circuit
integration
Pressure-Induced Simultaneous Metal-Insulator and Structural-Phase Transitions in LiH: a Quasiparticle Study
A pressure-induced simultaneous metal-insulator transition (MIT) and
structural-phase transformation in lithium hydride with about 1% volume
collapse has been predicted by means of the local density approximation (LDA)
in conjunction with an all-electron GW approximation method. The LDA wrongly
predicts that the MIT occurs before the structural phase transition. As a
byproduct, it is shown that only the use of the generalized-gradient
approximation together with the zero-point vibration produces an equilibrium
lattice parameter, bulk modulus, and an equation of state that are in excellent
agreement with experimental results.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter
Binding and interlayer force in the near-contact region of two graphite slabs: experiment and theory
Via a novel experiment, Liu \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. B, {\bf 85}, 205418
(2012)] estimated the graphite binding energy, specifically the cleavage
energy, an important physical property of bulk graphite. We re-examine the data
analysis and note that within the standard Lennard-Jones model employed, there
are difficulties in achieving internal consistency in the reproduction of the
graphite elastic properties. By employing similar models which guarantee
consistency with the elastic constant, we find a wide range of model dependent
binding energy values from the same experimental data. We attribute some of the
difficulty in the determination of the binding energy to: i) limited
theoretical understanding of the van der Waals dispersion of graphite cleavage,
ii) the mis-match between the strong bending stiffness of the graphite-SiO
cantilever and the weak asymptotic inter-layer forces that are integrated over
to produce the binding energy. We find, however, that the data does support
determination of a maximum inter-layer force that is relatively model
independent. We conclude that the peak force per unit area is GPa
for cleavage, and occurs at an inter-layer spacing of nm
Energy bands of atomic monolayers of various materials: Possibility of energy gap engineering
The mobility of graphene is very high because the quantum Hall effects can be
observed even at room temperature. Graphene has the potential of the material
for novel devices because of this high mobility. But the energy gap of graphene
is zero, so graphene can not be applied to semiconductor devices such as
transistors, LEDs, etc. In order to control the energy gaps, we propose atomic
monolayers which consist of various materials besides carbon atoms. To examine
the energy dispersions of atomic monolayers of various materials, we calculated
the electronic states of these atomic monolayers using density functional
theory with structural optimizations. The quantum chemical calculation software
"Gaussian 03" was used under periodic boundary conditions. The calculation
method is LSDA/6-311G(d,p), B3LYP/6-31G(d), or B3LYP/6-311G(d,p). The
calculated materials are C (graphene), Si (silicene), Ge, SiC, GeC, GeSi, BN,
BP, BAs, AlP, AlAs, GaP, and GaAs. These atomic monolayers can exist in the
flat honeycomb shapes. The energy gaps of these atomic monolayers take various
values. Ge is a semimetal; AlP, AlAs, GaP, and GaAs are indirect
semiconductors; and others are direct semiconductors. We also calculated the
change of energy dispersions accompanied by the substitution of the atoms. Our
results suggest that the substitution of impurity atoms for monolayer materials
can control the energy gaps of the atomic monolayers. We conclude that atomic
monolayers of various materials have the potential for novel devices.Comment: This paper was first presented at the 14th International Conference
on Modulated Semiconductor Structures (MSS14) held in Kobe, Japan, on 23 July
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