Al4SiC4 is a wide band gap semiconductor with numerous potential technological applications. We report here the first thorough experimental Raman and Infrared (IR) investigation of vibrational properties of Al4SiC4 single crystals grown by high temperature solution growth method. The experimental results are compared with the full theoretical analysis of vibrational properties based on Density Functional Theory calculations that are revisited here. We have obtained a good agreement between the experimental and calculated Raman phonon modes and this allowed the symmetry assignment of all the measured Raman modes. We have revisited the DFT calculation of the IR active phonon modes and our results for LO-TO splitting indicate a substantial decrease of the variation of omega(LO-TO) compared with the previous reported calculation. Moreover, most of the IR modes have been symmetry assigned from the comparison of the experimental IR spectra with the corresponding Raman spectra and the Al4SiC4 calculated phonon modes.
Iron complexes with a suitable ligand field undergo spin-crossover (SCO), which can be induced reversibly by temperature, pressure or even light. Therefore, these compounds are highly interesting candidates for optical information storage, for display devices and pressure sensors. The SCO phenomenon can be conveniently studied by spectroscopic techniques like Raman and infrared spectroscopy as well as nuclear inelastic scattering, a technique which makes use of the Mossbauer effect. This review covers new developments which have evolved during the last years like, e.g. picosecond infrared spectroscopy and thin film studies but also gives an overviewon newtechniques for the theoretical calculation of spin transition phenomena and vibrational spectroscopic data of SCO complexes.
We calculated the phonon dispersion relations of ZnX (X=Se, Te) employing ab initio techniques. These relations have been used to evaluate the temperature dependence of the respective specific heats of crystals with varied isotopic compositions. These results have been compared with mea- surements performed on crystals down to 2 K. The calculated and measured data are generally in excellent agreement with each other. Trends in the phonon dispersion relations and the correspond- ing densities of states for the zinc chalcogenide series of zincblende-type materials are discussed.
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.
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.