We report an ab-initio study of the stability and electronic properties of transition metal silicides in order to study their potential for high temperature thermoelectric applications. We focus on the family M5Si3 (M = Ta, W) which is stable up to about 2000 {deg}C. We first investigate the structural stability of the two compounds and then determine the thermopower of the equilibrium structure using the electronic density of states and Motts law. We find that W5Si3 has a relatively large thermopower but probably not sufficient enough for thermoelectric applications.
We report first principles calculations of the structural, electronic, elastic and vibrational properties of the semiconducting orthorhombic ZnSb compound. We study also the intrinsic point defects in order to eventually improve the thermoelectric properties of this already very promising thermoelectric material. Concerning the electronic properties, in addition to the band structure, we show that the Zn (Sb) crystallographically equivalent atoms are not exactly equivalent from the electronic point of view. Lattice dynamics, elastic and thermodynamic properties are found to be in good agreement with experiments and they confirm the non equivalency of the zinc and antimony atoms from the vibrational point of view. The calculated elastic properties show a relatively weak anisotropy and the hardest direction is the y direction. We observe the presence of low energy modes involving both Zn and Sb atoms at about 5-6 meV, similarly to what has been found in Zn4Sb3 and we suggest that the interactions of these modes with acoustic phonons could explain the relatively low thermal conductivity of ZnSb. Zinc vacancies are the most stable defects and this explains the intrinsic p-type conductivity of ZnSb.
We present results of electronic band structure, Fermi surface and electron transport properties calculations in orthorhombic $n$- and $p$-type SnSe, applying Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method and Boltzmann transport approach. The analysis accounted for temperature effect on crystallographic parameters in $Pnma$ structure as well as the phase transition to $CmCm$ structure at $T_csim 807 $K. Remarkable modifications of conduction and valence bands were notified upon varying crystallographic parameters within the structure before $T_c$, while the phase transition mostly leads to jump in the band gap value. The diagonal components of kinetic parameter tensors (velocity, effective mass) and resulting transport quantity tensors (electrical conductivity $sigma$, thermopower $S$ and power factor PF) were computed in wide range of temperature ($15-900 $K) and, hole ($p-$type) and electron ($n-$type) concentration ($10^{17}-10^{21}$ cm$^{-3}$). SnSe is shown to have strong anisotropy of the electron transport properties for both types of charge conductivity, as expected for the layered structure. In general, $p$-type effective masses are larger than $n$-type ones. Interestingly, $p$-type SnSe has strongly non-parabolic dispersion relations, with the pudding-mold-like shape of the highest valence band. The analysis of $sigma$, $S$ and PF tensors indicates, that the inter-layer electron transport is beneficial for thermoelectric performance in $n$-type SnSe, while this direction is blocked in $p$-type SnSe, where in-plane transport is preferred. Our results predict, that $n$-type SnSe is potentially even better thermoelectric material than $p$-type one. Theoretical results are compared with single crystal $p$-SnSe measurements, and good agreement is found.
First-principles calculations through a FLAPW-GGA method for six possible polymorphs of ruthenium mononitride RuN with various atomic coordination numbers CNs: cubic zinc blende (ZB) and cooperite PtS-like structures with CNs = 4; cubic rock-salt (RS), hexagonal WC-like and NiAs-like structures with CNs = 6 and cubic CsCl-like structure with CN = 8 indicate that the most stable is ZB structure, which is much more preferable for RuN than the recently reported RS structure for synthesized RuN samples. The elastic and electronic properties of ZB-RuN were investigated and discussed in comparison with those for RS-RuN polymorph.
We present calculations for electronic and magnetic properties of surface states confined by a circular quantum corral built of magnetic adatoms (Fe) on a Cu(111) surface. We show the oscillations of charge and magnetization densities within the corral and the possibility of the appearance of spin--polarized states. In order to classify the peaks in the calculated density of states with orbital quantum numbers we analyzed the problem in terms of a simple quantum mechanical circular well model. This model is also used to estimate the behaviour of the magnetization and energy with respect to the radius of the circular corral. The calculations are performed fully relativistically using the embedding technique within the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method.
We present a study of the electronic properties of Tl5Te3, BiTl9Te6 and SbTl9Te6 compounds by means of density functional theory based calculations. The optimized lattice constants of the compounds are in good agreement with the experimental data. The band gap of BiTl9Te6 and SbTl9Te6 compounds are found to be equal to 0.589 eV and 0.538 eV, respectively and are in agreement with the available experimental data. To compare the thermoelectric properties of the different compounds we calculate their thermopower using Motts law and show, as expected experimentally, that the substituted tellurides have much better thermoelectric properties compared to the pure compound.
P. Jund
,X. Tao
,R. Viennois
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(2011)
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"Stability and thermoelectric properties of transition metal silicides from first principles calculations"
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Philippe Jund
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