No Arabic abstract
Using density functional theory calculations, the ground state structure of BaFeO$_3$ (BFO) is investigated with local spin density approximation (LSDA). Cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic, and rhombohedral types BFO are considered to calculate the formation enthalpy. The formation enthalpies reveal that cubic is the most stable structure of BFO. Small energy difference between the cubic and tetragonal suggests a possible tetragonal BFO. Ferromagnetic(FM) and anitiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling between the Fe atoms show that all the striochmetric BFO are FM. The energy difference between FM and AFM shows room temperature ferromagnetism in cubic BFO in agreement with the experimental work. The LSDA calculated electronic structures are metallic in all studied crystallographic phases of BFO. Calculations including the Hubbard potential $U,i.e.$ LSDA+$U$, show that all phases of BFO are half-metallic consistent with the integer magnetic moments. The presence of half-metallicity is discussed in terms of electronic band structures of BFO.
Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are used to investigate the electronic and magnetic structures of a two-dimensional (2D) monolayer Li$_{2}$N. It is shown that bulk Li$_{3}$N is a non-magnetic semiconductor. The non-spinpolarized DFT calculations show that $p$ electrons of N in 2D Li$_{2}$N form a narrow band at the Fermi energy $E_{rm{F}}$ due to a low coordination number, and the density of states at the Fermi energy ($g(E_{rm{F}}$)) is increased as compared with bulk Li$_{3}$N. The large $g(E_{rm{F}}$) shows instability towards magnetism in Stoners mean field model. The spin-polarized calculations reveal that 2D Li$_{2}$N is magnetic without intrinsic or impurity defects. The magnetic moment of 1.0,$mu_{rm{B}}$ in 2D Li$_{2}$N is mainly contributed by the $p_{z}$ electrons of N, and the band structure shows half-metallic behavior. {Dynamic instability in planar Li$_{2}$N monolayer is observed, but a buckled Li$_{2}$N monolayer is found to be dynamically stable.} The ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling between the N atoms is also investigated to access the exchange field strength. {We found that planar (buckled) 2D Li$_{2}$N is a ferromagnetic material with Curie temperature $T_{c}$ of 161 (572) K.}
By means of ab initio calculations within the density functional theory, we have found that B80 fullerenes can condense to form stable face-centered-cubic fcc solids. It is shown that when forming a crystal, B80 cages are geometrically distorted, the Ih symmetry is lowered to Th, and four boron-boron chemical bonds are formed between every two nearest neighbor B80 cages. The cohesive energy of B80 fcc solid is 0.23 eV/atom with respect to the isolated B80 fullerene. The calculated electronic structure reveals that the fcc B80 solid is a metal. The predicted solid phase would constitute a form of pure boron and might have diverse implications. In addition, a simple electron counting rule is proposed, which could explain the stability of B80 fullerene and the recently predicted stable boron sheet.
In order to resolve an outstanding discrepancy between experiment and theory regarding the ground-state structure of Mg(BH4)2, we examine the importance of long-range dispersive interactions on the compounds thermodynamic stability. Careful treatment of the correlation effects within a recently developed nonlocal van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) leads to a good agreement with experiment, favoring the {alpha}-Mg(BH4)2 phase (P6122) and a closely related Mn(BH4)2-prototype phase (P3112) over a large set of polymorphs at low temperatures. Our study demonstrates the need to go beyond (semi)local density functional approximations for a reliable description of crystalline high-valent metal borohydrides.
We report a new metastable gamma polymorph of mixed metal borohydride LiSc(BH4)4. Using Density Functional Theory calculations with dispersion corrections, we prove importance of van der Waals H...H interactions for correct theoretical description of the title compound. We propose the ordered ground state structure (alpha form) and revise the recently reported beta phase, now describing it as a solid solution, LiSc(BH4)4-xClx, x~0.7. The LiSc(BH4)4 polymorphism is rationalized using Zr(BH4)4 type structure with Sc --> Zr and Li in the interstitial face-centered positions.
The success of descriptor-based material design relies on eliminating bad candidates and keeping good candidates for further investigation. While DFT has been widely successfully for the former, often times good candidates are lost due to the uncertainty associated with the DFT-predicted material properties. Uncertainty associated with DFT predictions has gained prominence and has led to the development of exchange correlation functionals that have built-in error estimation capability. In this work, we demonstrate the use of built-in error estimation capabilities within the BEEF-vdW exchange correlation functional for quantifying the uncertainty associated with the magnetic ground state of solids. We demonstrate this approach by calculating the uncertainty estimate for the energy difference between the different magnetic states of solids and compare them against a range of GGA exchange correlation functionals as is done in many first principles calculations of materials. We show that this estimate reasonably bounds the range of values obtained with the different GGA functionals. The estimate is determined as a post-processing step and thus provides a computationally robust and systematic approach to estimating uncertainty associated with predictions of magnetic ground states. We define a confidence value (c-value) that incorporates all calculated magnetic states in order to quantify the concurrence of the prediction at the GGA level and argue that predictions of magnetic ground states from GGA level DFT is incomplete without an accompanying c-value. We demonstrate the utility of this method using a case study of Li and Na-ion cathode materials and the c-value metric correctly identifies that GGA level DFT will have low predictability for NaFePO$_4$F.